¡Vaya familia Claus!

The Santa Clause and The Santa Clause 2 are two of my favourite holiday films. I really don't like the third film very much, so I wasn't expecting much when I heard Disney+ would be releasing a mini-series continuation. Well, I'm glad I went in with low expectations, because it pretty much met them, with the exception of an episode that I actually thought was pretty great. This series wasn't good since the second film, and although there are redeeming things about this series, it ultimately shouldn't have been made. Here's why I believe this series was completely unnecessary.

Picking up many years after the events of the films, Scott (Tim Allen) has decided to take up his chance of retiring. Recruiting a new person as Santa and flocking off to live the city life with his family, things at the North Pole start to go very wrong and they must return. Other than some side plots with some newcomers, that's really all this series is. It was average at best, but one episode made me give the whole series a pass overall. It involves Santa learning about how the first film happened in the first place. That's all I will say in order to not ruin it.

The biggest issue this series has is the fact that it never feels like it's going anywhere. Once they left the North Pole to live their lives, I knew they would eventually have to return, but when they return and the series concludes, it all felt lazy and rushed. There wasn't much holiday magic throughout this series and not that much holiday music either. In fact, this series closes out with a pop song playing and it's not even a Christmas song. This entire series just felt off and it also felt like it had a distractingly low budget to boot.

In the end, I can't even really recommend it to those who enjoyed the films, because I don't feel that it lives up to them. With that said though, on its own, episode five is more than worth checking out. You probably don't even have to watch the previous episodes. It's a standalone episode that explores some neat ideas. If the entire series was more like that I would've liked it a lot more. I could complain for hours about the things that didn't work for me in this series, like Scott's real son feeling like a waste, Bernard there as just pure fan service or the fact that the series doesn't really seem to care about the fact that Tim Allen as Santa is what made the original films work so well in the first place. I enjoyed quite a few moments throughout this series, but it overall just feels pointless to me. All episodes are now streaming on Disney+.

Now I never expected this to be some kind of masterpiece, of course not. But I used to love the movies, corny-ness n all, because they were funny and essentially heart felt. I've watched the first two episodes that are available so far and honestly it's shockingly bad. Where the movies traded off the corny-ness with sometimes blatant slapstick and sometimes tongue in cheek humour, this was just almost painful to watch. All the humour is forced, they've shoehorned cringe worthy music into it, and just made it generally heartless. And to say some of the acting is wooden does a disservice to trees. I will continue to watch and hope it redeems itself, but so far it's really disappointing.

The storyline deviates from the original premise pretty terribly.

Key take aways

• It's missing the other legendary characters (mother nature, sandman, father time, Cupid, Easter bunny)
• forest witch? Wtf. And that accent. Yikes
• we're the careers of Tim Allen, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Kal Penn really this desperate?

• David Krumholtz looks like he's had it rough but the explanation of him aging was decent.

• the only decent child actor in this was Elizabeth Allen-Dick (Tim Allen's real life daughter)
• most of the child actors were terrible, especially Devin Bright as Noel and Liam Kyle as Gary - terrible over acting by both and that stupid voice for Gary. This was the most painful part of watching this.

Redeeming qualities: Tim Allen was his usual funny part, and I liked Elizabeth Mitchell as feisty Mrs. Claus.

I'm in my 30s and absolutely love The Santa Clause, it reminds me of my childhood Christmases.

This show isn't to be taken seriously, it's the perfect thing to put on telly when you're cosy in bed, surrounded by pillows with your candles on and hot water bottle when its dark and cold outside. It's light, silly and nostalgic and a nice little escapism from the real world as an adult. It also makes me super excited for Christmas!!

I like the occasional nods to the original movies and love that people my age have been with Tim Allen on his journey to becoming and eventually embracing the role of Santa which started 28 years ago, and now were coming back to real life with him after all that time. Really cute.

I watched the show and I don't understand how people who claim that they are fans of the movies thought this show was stupid. How can you form an opinion after watching the set up of the whole show. I give this show a 9 only because I found Noel to be very immature, very needy and too childish. So what if I don't like 1 character out of the whole cast.

For those who really enjoyed the movies as much as they say they did has done themselves a disservice not watching.more. I waited until after episode 4 to speak out. The show is well written, funny, heartwarming and really hits on a few issues.

How many people get exactly what they want and then they turned around and ruined it. Do we not remember what Jack Frost did to the North Pole. Come on. That's real life stuff someone making it to the top and then letting it go to their head. The writers did a great job with the story line and I felt myself yelling at the TV when the episode was over. I have to wait another week to see what happens next. I'm really curious.

Lastly for those reviews that talk about the show only attracting smaller children. Let me tell you I am 56 years old and I am excited to watch next week. Then I will be excited to watch the week after that.

Quite tearing a show apart until you know what it's really about. If.you live Christmas, the Santa clause movies and Tim Allen. Watch for yourselves don't read anything else until you know what the show is really about.

Thank you for making a really hood mini series about Christmas that is just hood clean family fun. I LOVE IT.