Part three in the Santa Clause trilogy, and hopefully the last of the series

A third film in this series was to be expected with the success of the first two 'Santa Clause' films. Well Tim Allen is back with Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. If anyone missed the first two films, Tim Allen is Santa Claus and has not only taken over the job, but got married in the last film to fulfill that plot premise. This time around it seems like he is becoming better accustomed to the role, and making life in the North Pole has become a little easier. That is not to say that he has figured out everything though, as it seems he is putting the job at a higher level of importance than his home life. His wife is also pregnant, so she is feeling a little left out, and together they decide to invite her parents up for a visit. The problem is that they don't know what he does, and a charade to pretend they are all in Canada begins.

As one of the main subplot of the story, Jack Frost has started to display a tinge of jealousy about all the attention that Santa Claus gets each Christmas season. He want his own holiday, and feels that he brings enough to Winter that he deserves to be recognized for all of his efforts. Nobody else really sides with him, including the group of holiday characters that decide these types of things. From that point, he takes it upon himself to try and take over for the current Santa Claus, and create a way for him to take over as the head of the North Pole. In order to do this, he begins to sabotage everything, hoping that he can trick Santa Claus into enacting the little used Escape Clause to give up the job and go back to his life before he was Santa. This sets the stage for the drama that will unfold later in the film.

Tim Allen is of course good in the role of Santa Claus, and has been quite good for all three films. This time around though, it seems like he has far less material to work with, and thus is not quite as funny as he once was. Sure I had a few laughs, but it was more about some of the inherent jokes within the story, and not because Allen did a good job at selling them. To infuse further humor into the story, they brought in Martin Short as Jack Frost, and on paper this seems like a good tandem to play off each other when it comes to the more humorous elements of the story. It is quite unfortunate though, that the pairing doesn't work at all, and Short really isn't funny in the role. Instead I would have to say that his character became quite annoying, and when his negative tendencies start to show themselves, you really start to dislike everything about the part.

With Santa Clause 3 you end up with a film that was going to be made no matter what, and gone are some of the elements that made the first film in the series so good. There is no longer an innocence within the story, and even though they try to hammer home that the point of Christmas is that it shouldn't be treated as a business, but ironically, this film was just a way to cash in on the Christmas hype itself. I thought they did a terrible job sticking with the themes of the first two films, and though they attempted to tie in the "baby" plot as a way to keep it family oriented, it didn't come off as endearing or entertaining. I think that they should have stopped at film number 2, and though this film could appeal to some just because of its central theme, I feel it has completely missed the mark for everyone else. This is not one that I can recommend for viewing or purchase, and in the end that saddens me, because I was excited to see it.