Fred Claus
Directed by David Dobkin
Divorce, Italian Style
Directed by Pietro Germi
There’s no question that Fred Claus, an insipid comedy from Warner Bros. about Santa’s wayward sibling, has all the ingredients of a bad movie, but the flaws are revealing of a larger problem. Unable to sustain its one-note premise, the story foolishly revels in the mythology of Christmas to mask comedic vapidity. The trick doesn’t work. With Vince Vaughn in autopilot as foul-mouthed clod Fred, the movie carries the illusion of subversive storytelling, but it really plays nice.
As directed by David Dobkin—whose studio cred comes from the smash hit Wedding Crashers (which at least built on its concept to establish a zany comedy of manners)—Fred Claus toys with familial jealousy themes. But the perceived gravitas is a red herring. Unlike Elf, John Favreau’s wickedly funny Will Ferrell vehicle, nothing in Dobkin’s narrative mocks the framework of the material. That’s a feat in itself, considering how satiric the treatment sounds.
As Santa (Paul Giamatti) struggles to handle his prankster brother on Christmas Eve while dodging a menacing bureaucrat (Kevin Spacey, sadly wasted) looking to shut down the North Pole operation, Fred grows bitter in the shadow of Nick’s pervasive sainthood. The idea is intriguing to a point, but the movie isn’t sharply written or lively enough to validate its fantasy. Poor Giamatti looks like a sap with a fake beard, and Vaughn is playing an impersonation of himself. There’s no keen subtext—only the assaulting sense that someone wants you to believe there’s wit embedded in the details of the tale. “I assure you this is a story you’ve never heard before,” claims an omniscient narrator in the opening scene. Oh, but we have: It’s a one-note holiday film that rejoices in ignorance.
For all its mindlessness, Fred Claus illustrates a frequent problem with mainstream comedic entertainment. It’s a common misconception that the genre provides an excuse for recycling empty tropes and crass behavior ad infinitum (hence its frequent absence at the Academy Awards). As a matter of fact, it’s no easy task to tell a joke. Vaughn isn’t funny without funny material, but audiences often accept him as the punchline. That’s a dangerous reality, as long as empty-headed comedies loom large at the box office.
Fortunately, Film Forum is screening the antidote this week. Divorce, Italian Style, Pietro Germi’s nuanced 1961 portrait of marital discomfort, shows the layers of insight necessary for a comedy to justify its theme. Like Fred Claus, the characters in Divorce wrestle with family troubles, but their woes don’t get resolved with the shrug of conventions. The desire of wealthy baron Ferdinando (Marcello Mastroianni) to leave his unsatisfying spouse (Daniela Rocca) for a younger woman leads to a cockeyed scheme that’s equal parts Throw Momma from the Train and The Conversation (retroactively, of course).
Scheming to set his wife up with a former lover so he can kill her for offending his honor—and going as far as planting a recording device to make sure the seduction progresses according to plan—Ferdinando becomes a character of social confusion. He only seeks immediate satisfaction. His flawed rationales accumulate into a big lump of disaster. Now there’s a moral for you.
Coming at the end of Film Forum’s Germi retrospective, Divorce, Italian Style develops an increasingly complicated plot that has no semblance of humor about it. But Germi, working with the Age-Scarpelli writing team, injects hilarity into Ferdinando’s mangled attempts at self-satisfaction. He’s a joke in spite of himself. That’s what Dobkin should’ve done with Vaughn in Fred Claus, but the lazily assembled production reeks of a different kind of self-satisfaction: payday.
Directed by David Dobkin
Divorce, Italian Style
Directed by Pietro Germi
There’s no question that Fred Claus, an insipid comedy from Warner Bros. about Santa’s wayward sibling, has all the ingredients of a bad movie, but the flaws are revealing of a larger problem. Unable to sustain its one-note premise, the story foolishly revels in the mythology of Christmas to mask comedic vapidity. The trick doesn’t work. With Vince Vaughn in autopilot as foul-mouthed clod Fred, the movie carries the illusion of subversive storytelling, but it really plays nice.
As directed by David Dobkin—whose studio cred comes from the smash hit Wedding Crashers (which at least built on its concept to establish a zany comedy of manners)—Fred Claus toys with familial jealousy themes. But the perceived gravitas is a red herring. Unlike Elf, John Favreau’s wickedly funny Will Ferrell vehicle, nothing in Dobkin’s narrative mocks the framework of the material. That’s a feat in itself, considering how satiric the treatment sounds.
As Santa (Paul Giamatti) struggles to handle his prankster brother on Christmas Eve while dodging a menacing bureaucrat (Kevin Spacey, sadly wasted) looking to shut down the North Pole operation, Fred grows bitter in the shadow of Nick’s pervasive sainthood. The idea is intriguing to a point, but the movie isn’t sharply written or lively enough to validate its fantasy. Poor Giamatti looks like a sap with a fake beard, and Vaughn is playing an impersonation of himself. There’s no keen subtext—only the assaulting sense that someone wants you to believe there’s wit embedded in the details of the tale. “I assure you this is a story you’ve never heard before,” claims an omniscient narrator in the opening scene. Oh, but we have: It’s a one-note holiday film that rejoices in ignorance.
For all its mindlessness, Fred Claus illustrates a frequent problem with mainstream comedic entertainment. It’s a common misconception that the genre provides an excuse for recycling empty tropes and crass behavior ad infinitum (hence its frequent absence at the Academy Awards). As a matter of fact, it’s no easy task to tell a joke. Vaughn isn’t funny without funny material, but audiences often accept him as the punchline. That’s a dangerous reality, as long as empty-headed comedies loom large at the box office.
Fortunately, Film Forum is screening the antidote this week. Divorce, Italian Style, Pietro Germi’s nuanced 1961 portrait of marital discomfort, shows the layers of insight necessary for a comedy to justify its theme. Like Fred Claus, the characters in Divorce wrestle with family troubles, but their woes don’t get resolved with the shrug of conventions. The desire of wealthy baron Ferdinando (Marcello Mastroianni) to leave his unsatisfying spouse (Daniela Rocca) for a younger woman leads to a cockeyed scheme that’s equal parts Throw Momma from the Train and The Conversation (retroactively, of course).
Scheming to set his wife up with a former lover so he can kill her for offending his honor—and going as far as planting a recording device to make sure the seduction progresses according to plan—Ferdinando becomes a character of social confusion. He only seeks immediate satisfaction. His flawed rationales accumulate into a big lump of disaster. Now there’s a moral for you.
Coming at the end of Film Forum’s Germi retrospective, Divorce, Italian Style develops an increasingly complicated plot that has no semblance of humor about it. But Germi, working with the Age-Scarpelli writing team, injects hilarity into Ferdinando’s mangled attempts at self-satisfaction. He’s a joke in spite of himself. That’s what Dobkin should’ve done with Vaughn in Fred Claus, but the lazily assembled production reeks of a different kind of self-satisfaction: payday.
