Rating: 

Plot: Kind-hearted lawyer Sam Whipple receives a visit from Santa Claus. Santa is disconsolate because miser Phineas T. Prune has brought up the North Pole and evicted him for unpaid rent. Prune will only let Santa back on the condition that he never give presents to children again. Rather than face that, Sam and Santa set out to earn the unpaid rent. Sam tries to get Santa a job as a department store Santa, but Prune determines to sabotage all their efforts.
 

This Italian-made kiddie film is an insipid and quite dreary affair. The plot never manages anything more than a tried, true and quite undistinguished redemption-of-the-miser rehash. The sets all look drab and dreary – the department store for example consists of a single room and the North Pole is about the size of a cottage interior. Worse are the special effects – the flight of Santa’s reindeer and sleigh barely get by, but the model of the picture postcard town is thoroughly unconvincing. Some films can surmount all this by simple good cheer, but this is dogged by its complete failure to fly either as sentiment, humour or imagination. The animated opening credits, where Santa and Prune hop around rooftops and chimneys using a series of wild gadgets present the most liveliness on offer in the film and gives the impression the film is along the lines of a wacky races caper, but in fact quite belies the utter banality of what is subsequently delivered. Rabagliati doesn’t even seem a particularly convincing Santa – one expects a Santa to be rolypoly and chubby-cheeked, instead Rabagliati has classical features and his disposition throughout seems more dazed and somewhat bewildered than jolly.