Fred Claus Review

Great ways to open a Christmas family movie No. 59 - Kathy Bates giving birth. The midwife claims Bates has delivered the fattest baby she has ever seen. Bring on Trevor Peacock ('The Vicar Of Dibley') as the father, and viewers can not avoid imagining the proud parents conceiving this nightmare child. And you had thought Bates naked in a hot tub in About Schmidt was nasty? This opening scene is like Eraserhead with tinsel.

Fred Claus has the nice idea of presenting Vince Vaughn as the grouch with more reason than most to loath Christmas. For him, it's just a sore reminder of his place in the shadow of his globally popular kid brother, Santa (Giamatti). Yet as with many family movies that try to entertain all ages at once, this is a mess that is unlikely to please anyone.

The film's peculiar logic sees Santa as a regular, if chunky, man so astonishingly caring that he achieves sainthood during his own lifetime. Naturally this hasty canonisation means Santa and his family get to live forever and never age. Blimey.

Santa gets an operations base at the North Pole, a limitless supply of elves - most of whom have heads resembling withered apples - and a wife, Annette (Richardson). Fred however is a grumpy deadbeat, working as a bailiff and scarcely holding on to girlfriend Wanda (Weisz), a Chicago traffic cop sporting a deliberately Thames Estuary accent.