Santa Claus is up against an evil Jack Frost in "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause". Scott Calvin/Santa Claus is preparing for another Christmas at the North Pole when a mischievous Jack Frost (Martin Short) has plans to take over his place as the head of Christmas. Jack Frost finds a clause in Santa's contract that he uses to become Santa, a whole bunch of nonsense happens in the middle frame, and finally it's a battle between the two for the title of Santa Claus. Who will win? I think that's pretty obvious.
Boy, this third film in the series was a real letdown. I didn't enjoy the second Santa Clause as much as the first, but even it had more going for it than this. The problem with this one was really the characters, I disliked about 70% of them. Carol's parents are absolute fools. When they come for a visit, Carol and her hubby Santa lead them to believe that the North Pole is actually Canada and that all Canadians are just really short people ... and here's the thing ... they actually believe it. Just a complete dumbing down of characters. Curtis the Elf is more annoying than he was in the second film, the little girl Lucy (who has really taken over Charlie's role as the "cute kid") is really irritating at times, and Jack Frost himself is a very blah villain who really just adds nothing to the movie.
I was a teenager when I watched Santa Clause 3 the first time, and during it I was wondering what I would've thought of it as a young child. I don't think as a 6-10 year old that this would've really engaged me or interested as much as the original "The Santa Clause" did to be honest. What really put me off was that this third film basically ignored Scott's son Charlie and just threw in Neil and Laura's daughter Lucy in his place (which did not work for me at all). The characters were lame, the Canada jokes were hokey and The Santa Clause 3 just wasn't that good at all.
4/10
