YMMV / Santa Claus: The Movie

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The failures of Patch's attempts to modernize production are treated like a lesson on Good Old Ways. However, they are consistently shown to fail due to him and his (untrained) operators not anticipating the need to inspect and maintain equipment, exacerbated by a complete lack of quality assurance testing. It's like the Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket part of a manufacturing training video.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: If there's a reason why it's a Cult Classic rather than a "mainstream" classic, it's because critics saw the approach of copying the exact same narrative structure that was used in the Salkinds' previous Superman: The Movie almost to a "T" (including having an Expy of Lex Luthor appear as the Big Bad by the mid-point of the film) applied for a Santa Claus movie and they collectively went "...what?" Nowadays that conceit wouldn't look quite so silly, but in The '80s family-friendly cinema and fantasy as a genre were not as appreciated as they are now, so there wasn't really a frame of reference for it.
• Awesome Music: The other expensive 1985 Box Office Bomb to be graced by a Henry Mancini score.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Even by the somewhat nonsensical standards of the movie's second half, The Patchmobile launch is especially silly/bizarre. From the launch sequence, to B.Z. and staff cheering Patch ENTIRELY too long for the segment, to Patch yelling "YAHOO!" upon takeoff (in a voice completely different than Dudley Moore's, and utterly out of character for the low-key inventor elf)... it's just a very, very surreal sequence to observe.
• Covered Up: Hands up New Edition fans: How many know that the title track of of their 1985 EP Christmas All Over the World is actually a cover of the Award-Bait Song from this movie? It doesn't help that unlike that EP, the soundtrack has never had a widely available CD or digital release. Sheena Easton's original version of the song was given a CD and streaming release in 2021 as part of a Greatest Hits Album.
• Critical Backlash: Critics who don't like this movie tend to be really hard on it, with at least two retrospective tomes even ranking it as one of the worst Christmas movies ever. Viewers familiar with any of the Christmas movies Mystery Science Theater 3000 or RiffTrax has tackled, or the gobs upon gobs of low-budget Strictly Formula productions themed to the holiday created for TV and the Direct to Video market, may well wonder what makes this well-acted, truly lavish production so awful by comparison. Sure, the second half is on the silly side plotwise and the villain is over the top, but is that so unusual for a Christmas movie aimed at kids? The tonal dissonance of a character like Santa Claus getting a sincere, superhero movie-style treatment is probably a big factor in this trope being invoked. (There are some critics who think the first half is quite good; the folks from The Agony Booth who reviewed it even stated that if it stopped there it would've been a classic. Maybe it should have been split into two movies?)
• Cult Classic: It was no box office blockbuster, but is one of the better-remembered Christmas films of The '80s. It helps that it's as close as Christmas-themed fantasy cinema has ever come to a full-out Epic Movie. And while it's clearly a film of its time, the sincere approach to the story and characters (especially in the first half) has aged well.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film did surprisingly well in England (or not so surprisingly, given Dudley Moore being a beloved comic there) and remains highly popular there to this day, where it's often shown during the holiday season — ITV has run it almost annually since 2008. In a 2019 Random Roles video interview with the AV Club, John Lithgow said that this movie "is half of what I'm known for in England", where he's still approached by fans who grew up with it, thanks primarily to TV airings. 2023 was a year without an ITV airing, but StudioCanal reissued the film in U.K. theaters to show off the 4K restoration they prepped for a new home media release!
• Harsher in Hindsight: The subplot about B.Z. and his toys took on a whole new level of relevance with Turn of the Millennium stories about lead-based paint, etc. in toys that come from China.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A lot of this movie's faults comes from its misguided attempts to emulate the formula invented by Superman: The Movie. Decades later, renowned Superman writer Grant Morrison would create a version of Santa who is partly a Superman Substitute. The character's later stories would even shift the setting from an ambiguous medieval era to the modern day.
  • B.Z.'s ultimate fate is so similar to that of the Chocolate Cartel members in Wonka (in both cases they're sent helplessly floating away after eating too much magical candy) that the latter may be an intentional Shout-Out to the former.
• Memetic Mutation: "FOR FREE?!"
• Moral Event Horizon: B.Z. crosses it by attempting to flee to Rio with all his money while leaving numerous children to possibly die from his explosive lollipops.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Anya Claus is played by Judy Cornwell, who would later be best known for playing Daisy in Keeping Up Appearances.
  • Santa's actor David Huddleston is now much more well-known to film buffs as The Big Lebowski.
• Signature Scene: Santa Claus and his reindeer heading into New York City and passing over such landmarks as the Rockefeller Center ice rink and its famous Christmas tree. It has become a stock scene for anything involving Santa Claus, especially in New York adverts, such as the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular ad. For many years, the scene actually was used as part of the stage show's opening sequence.
• Tear Jerker: The scene where Patch is removed as Santa's number two, then decides to leave the North Pole. Already well-acted, it's made just that little bit worse in that Patch isn't fired, he just decides to face the music and resign. It's implied that he knows he's about to be fired and resigns to spare the good-hearted Santa the pain of having to do it.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: This is a near-Epic Movie about a character whose nature, associates, and world don't exactly cry out for the gravitas of a Superman spectacular, with a story that gets sillier as it goes along. One would expect a World of Ham, but with the key exception of John Lithgow as B.Z. (a case of Evil Is Hammy as this film's equivalent to Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor, which works in context), every actor plays it sincerely and the movie is more likable for it than it otherwise would be. David Huddleston as Santa Claus is the most prominent example, but Dudley Moore's endearing Patch is a lot less hammy/indulgent than one would expect from a comic actor who was the biggest name in the cast back in the day, and Burgess Meredith is a One-Scene Wonder as the dignified Ancient Elf.

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