Defending Santa (2013) Dean Cain, Jud Tylor, John Savage, Gary Hudson, Eric Scott Woods Movie Review

Defending Santa (2013)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Jud Tylor and Dean Cain in Defending Santa (2013)

Santa's in Court Again

It's Christmas morning and widowed Sheriff, and single dad, Scott Hanson (Dean Cain) has been sent out on a call about an abandoned vehicle. Well he finds the vehicle, nearly crashing into it, but he also finds an old man who looks like Santa Claus face down in the snow. Well 11 months later and after coming out of a coma the old man says he is Kris Kringle (Bill Lewis) which leads to quite a stir in the community and with the local DA wanting to put the old man on trial to disprove who he says he is. New in town is Sarah Walker (Jud Tylor) a lawyer who Scott knows from a few years back when during a trial they shared a kiss and who is charged with defending the old man bringing her to work closely with Scott again.

Sometimes I wonder if the writers of Christmas movies have a big velvet sack containing all the cliches which you find in Christmas movies and just pick a handful out at random to create a new movie. That certainly feels like it could be the case with "Defending Santa" as we have a few old cliches going on from the widowed father who starts to feel something for a young woman to the whole having to prove Kris Kringle is real court case set up. There are other smaller cliches in there as well but the focus is mostly on the romance between Scott and Sarah with her being good with his daughter but then also on the court case of proving who Kris Kringle is with it of course going down to the wire on Christmas Eve.

The trouble is that not once did "Defending Santa" push me in to the Christmas spirit and it just felt like a movie going through the motions, doing the cliches in frankly a cliche manner. It's not just that because with much of the movie being set around Thanksgiving it doesn't even have the Christmassy look which is always something I enjoy in a Christmas movie.

What this all boils down to is that "Defending Santa" might entertain a young teenage audience but for me it just didn't fill me with the seasonal joy I long for from a Christmas movie.

Tags: Santa Claus, Christmas Movies


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