In Review: The Christmas Chronicles 2

Synopsis: Two years have passed since the first Christmas Chronicles. Kate Pierce, now a cynical teen, is unexpectedly reunited with Santa Claus when a mysterious troublemaker threatens to cancel Christmas – forever.

The Story

Two years have passed since Kate Pierce had her first wild adventure with Santa and his elves. Things have moved on. Kate’s mother has a new man in her life, which subsequently gives Kate a younger stepbrother. Making matters worse is the fact that the newly formed family is on holiday in Cancun. This is worlds apart from Kate’s ideal version of Christmas.

Things are not too good in the North Pole either. Belsnickel a disgraced Elve is plotting a devastating attack on Santa’s Village and is planning to use Kate and her stepbrother Jack as unwitting pawns in his game. Furthermore, should Belsnickel succeed. It will end Christmas forever.

The Acting

Kurt Russell returns and absolutely rocks the joint as Santa Claus. He even gets another Christmas Rock N’ Roll style song to perform. Russell’s long time partner Goldie Hawn reprises her role as Mrs. Claus and gets much more to do than she had in the previous film.

Darby Camp reprises her role of Kate and does a pretty good job of doing the sulky teen routine for the first 15 minutes of the film. Luckily, the sulking ends as soon as she is reunited with Santa, which is obviously where the real fun begins. She gets a nice scene in which kate meets the 13-year-old version of her late father in a nice time travel twist.

NewcomerJahzir Bruno plays the role of Kate’s young stepbrother Jack who gets loads of fun stuff to do as we get the junior version of ‘Die Hard’ in which Jack has to contend with jacked up Elves that have taken Elves Bane. Most of Jahzir Bruno’s scenes are with Goldie Hawn’s Mrs. Claus.

Rounding out the cast is Julian Dennison who does a brilliant job of playing the evil Elve Belsnickel. His scenes see him pretty much challenging Santa at every turn.

Overall

Directed and co-written by Chris Columbus The Christmas Chronicles 2 does a pretty good job of building on the mythology from the first movie. Goldie Hawn proved to be absolutely delightful as Mrs. Claus and has some brilliant scenes throughout the film. It was great to see both Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell using their comfortable chemistry. As they portrayed the mythical Christmas couple.

As with all things Christmas related. The movie does borrow a fair few plot devices from other films. For example, Belsnickel is basically a harder-core version of Dudley Moore’s Patch from Santa Claus: The Movie. Unlike Patch, Belsnickel is more self-aware of his misdeeds, which makes him more of a villain. But the two share a very similar character arc in that they both were Santa’s favorite Elves. And both learned to build toys and invent from Santa.

Overall. A pretty good sequel, which manages to build on what we had before. I loved how they used Jack as a means to parody some classic action movie tropes. It’s left open for a third film, but should that not happen. This second outing would be as good a way for Netflix to close the book on things. Hopefully not though because the 7-year-old within me thinks Kurt Russell’s version of Santa is cool.

The Christmas Chronicles 2 is now streaming on Netflix and is well worth a look if you are seeking some early Christmas fun.