Every now and again, a mindless holiday movie will come along, seemingly telling its holly-jolly story, when in reality it’s actually making some poignant observations concerning our holiday observation habits and whatnot. I can’t think of any at this exact moment, but they’ve existed. Trust me. Then there are some that are pure fluff, any meaning being forcibly injected by the viewer like a pediatrician going after crazy-ass Karen’s kids after she posts some madness about the CDC and aborted fetuses on Facebook. Noelle straddles the divide identified here, and it suffers for it just about as much as I did watching it.
The absolute surface-level stuff of the film centers on the two children of Santa Claus, Noelle and Nick Kringle. Santa has died (sorry, kids who happen to have stumbled upon this post, Santa’s dead, get used to it), but “Long live Santa” as Nick is chosen by apparent North Pole Salic Law to be the new Santa, Noelle being relegated to some vague support role (mostly making cards and keeping Nick on the straight and narrow) while still maintaining the privilege enjoyed by the Kringle family for centuries. Thing is, Nick sucks at being Santa and is stressing about it, so Noelle tells him to take a weekend off and go on a sunny vacation. When he doesn’t come back, she’s tasked with tracking him down and dragging him back so that X-Mas doesn’t suck this year. While she’s off on her fish-out-of-water misadventures and shenanigans, cousin Gabe Kringle is put in charge, but his aloof technocratic style of Santa-ing doesn’t sit well with the North Pole community. Oh, and there may or may not be a love story in the offing, too, ‘cause why the fuck not.
Now, interestingly enough, the film actually seems to touch on some pretty salient points regarding the stresses of the Holiday Season: Both Nick and Noelle find themselves constrained by the extreme hold of tradition and familial expectation over their lives. Nick responds via borderline nervous breakdown and escape, Noelle knuckles under and finds the stresses compounding around her. The rigidity of the established order is painted in overtly negative light, with the council of elder elves both tightly gripping to the status quo – both in terms of how X-Mas is pursued and in maintaining a fully male succession to the Santa mantle – and making a mockery of an already highly-questionable attempt by Gabe to instill some new ideas into the traditionalist landscape. The problems with such a blindly patriarchic society are illustrated by Noelle’s apparent talents and her push to make things more, shall we say, meritocratic, at least more blind to the potential of the female members of North Pole society. There’s even a Soviet level of brainwashing regarding the power and importance of the ideology of X-Mas, the holiday being molded into the solution to all problems and an inherent good in and of itself, concepts pounded into the denizens of the North Pole from birth. Some heady ideas here, especially considering the source.
Unfortunately, the film punts on just about every one of these notions. Granted, a bit of the proto-feminist (in the broadest sense) stuff holds, as Noelle shows her prowess in Santa-ing, but the rest are kicked to the wayside. Nick’s behavior in running from a psychologically oppressive situation, likely the only healthy situation open to him, is almost roundly condemned, often both explicitly and implicitly, and he’s only seen in a more positive light when he bends a bit and strives toward making X-mas bright the Right Way. Though some minor changes are embraced by the powers that be, the idea that X-Mas is the be-all and end-all and ought to be treated as such sticks around and is thoroughly affirmed. Enforced happiness and whatnot is the only way, according to the film. Sure, we may bristle under the stress and pain and what-have-you attendant to the Holiday Season, but, hey, suck it up, princess, it’s fucking X-Mas, show some fucking respect, knuckle under and conform, dammit! Sucks to your mental health! There’s also an attempt to show some class divides, with Noelle’s venturing south being played as something of an upper-class twit going into regular society and floundering in her ignorance and ineptitude, but, of course, it’s all played for cheap laughs, and any commentary on the nature of privilege is hand-waved away in favor of keeping the pro-X-Mas-at-all-costs theme alive and thriving. Real problems out in the world? Reality feeling wrong and needing some deep aid? Mere trifling matters to the void-like maw of X-Mas, sated only with a tribute of your very soul, the feast lasting for eternity like the gnashing of the Three Sinners in Satan’s jaws.
Yeah, great messaging, filmmakers. It doesn’t help that these awful messages are communicated with all of the grace and skill one can glean from the Complete and Utter Hack’s Guide to X-Mas Script Writing. Just about everyone in the North Pole speaks in partial carol titles (e.g. an elder elf – played by Michael “Bert Gummer hisself” Gross – settling the audience of an assembly with things like “Silent Night” and the like), and the rest of their dialogue is loaded with obnoxious, season-themed bullshit: “Oh my garland!”, “I’m all earmuffs”, and “Thank garland” are just the tip of the iceberg. Not a single character acts like a human being aside from private investigator Jake, and he’s pulling double duty as an example of the Wrong Way of Thinking, forgetting and/or outright denying the all-encompassing power of and goodness of X-Mas, so he’s clearly an idiot for acting normally and treating X-Mas like any other day, the fool. Insert the usual holiday script contrivances and treacle and you’re left with a script so bad it’s understandable why Disney dumped this onto their streaming service, rather than giving it a theatrical release, regardless of the money they clearly spent on it.
Yeah, compared to others of its ilk, the film looks mostly pretty good, with some decent lighting and cinematography at times: the warmth of the opening semi-fake-out scene is palpable and nostalgia-inducing in the proper ways. They got a decently-solid cast to handle things, including Anna Kendrick as Noelle, Bill Hader as Nick, the aforementioned Michael Gross, fucking Shirley MacLaine as Noelle’s servant elf (don’t argue with me here, she’s essentially Alfred Pennyworth to Noelle’s Bruce Wayne) Polly, and Kingsley Ben-Adir as the above-mentioned Jake, the highlight of the film in terms of acting (though MacLaine does her damnedest to steal scenes with her innate not-having-any-of-it attitude), but they’re all wasted due to the script and malformed theming. The visual effects are roundly atrocious, especially the obviously shoddy reindeer (don’t get me started on Noelle’s pet, Snowcone, and how bad it looks in every shot). Anti-Millennial sentiment runs rampant, with the idea of adding technology to the X-Mas proceedings and those damn kids and their Amazon Prime being shoved under the wheels of traditionalism and peak Boomer energy, all in spite of the plot point that all kids of Santa-believing age somehow have e-mail addresses (parents, as a childless shut-in I have to ask, is this a thing nowadays?). Oh, and there’s a choir of carolers that just pops up every now and again and sings shit at the North Pole. No reason for it, it’s just there for “laughs”. Yeah, nope.
The bottom line, according to Noelle: Don’t think about X-Mas and the meaning and everything, ignore that itch at the back of your brain to toss away the stress and pressure and mental and financial hardships, don’t worry about systemic societal issues that continue unabated by the presence of the holidays, and just embrace the clear and present necessity of X-mas’s existence. Be happy, no matter how much you may not feel it, how much you may not want to. It’s X-mas, motherfucker, conform or die. For kids and families! Hooray! Ring out those bells! …I need another drink…
Allusions of Grandeur 