Zack Rippy

I love Christmas. It is by far my favorite time of the year. I have strict self-imposed rules though:

• No Christmas music before Thanksgiving
• No Christmas movies before Thanksgiving
• No decorating before Thanksgiving

I made an exception this Saturday. A friend of mine obtained free passes to an advanced screening of the new holiday movie Fred Claus, starring Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughn. (Thanks for the ticket, Stephen!)

Vaughn stars as Santa’s (Giamatti) older brother Fred, who has lived his entire life in the shadow of his legendary “saint” of a brother. Due to some crazy circumstances, Fred has to go to the North Pole and assist his brother in preparing for the big night..Christmas Eve.

Fred Claus is a better-than-average, standard family Christmas film. It certainly isn’t a hilarious movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it was funny, festive and genuine enough to keep me interested. I’m sure it is one that would be great with the family as well. There was little to no profanity of any kind, so it is certainly “kid-safe.” I don’t think it is aimed at young children to the extent that a film such as “The Santa Clause” is though, but there is plenty to keep them involved and interested.

Overall, I’d recommend it for an enjoyable evening out with your family. In fact, we often catch a movie when the entire family is together for Thanksgiving and Fred Claus has that kind of gathering written all over it.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Movies/TV, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.