Though the idea of Kurt Russell as Santa Claus seems immensely appealing, there wasn’t much love around these parts for Clay Kaytis’ The Christmas Chronicles, Netflix’s big seasonal film of 2018. But enough people did like it – estimates suggest that it was streamed over 20 million times in its first week of release – to warrant a sequel. Most of the original supporting cast return though you’d be forgiven for remembering most of them and this one gets a director upgrade, the first film’s producer Chris Columbus (Home Alone (1990), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), the first two Harry Potter films) stepping up to the canvas backed chair for the occasion.

Two years after the events of the first film, Kate Pierce (Darby Camp) and her brother Teddy (Judah Lewis) are spending Christmas in Cancún, Mexico with their mother Claire (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), her new boyfriend Bob (Tyrese Gibson) and his son Jack (Jahzir Bruno). Kate is struggling with her mum’s new relationship and is planning to run away back to Boston to be on her own. On the shuttle to the airport, Jack has hitched a ride and they’re both unaware that the driver is Belsnickel (Julian Dennison), a disgruntled elf from Santa’s North Pole home who has taken on human form. He forces the kids through a portal, allowing him to hitch a ride when Santa Claus (Kurt Russell) rescues them and takes them home to Mrs Claus (Goldie Hawn). Belsnickel, feeling that he was neglected by the Claus’ as a young elf, is planning to steal the magic star atop the Christmas tree than powers Santa’s operation and start up a rival service at the South Pole, driving the elves mad with a special gas in the process. It’s up to Kate and Jack to save the day.

Again, there’s a lot of fun to be had from Russell who’s clearly having a ball and the scenes he shares with real-life wife Goldie Hawn (they hadn’t worked together since 1987’s Overboard) are so charming that if they’re like this in real life, it’s no wonder they’ve enjoyed one of the longest standing marriages in the notoriously fickle world of Hollywood. Russell is far and away the best thing about the film, the only real reason to put up with the appalling schmaltz that runs rampant throughout.

For a film directed by an A-lister – albeit one who hadn’t made a film since 2015’s dreadful Pixels – and one that’s a sequel to one of Netflix’s biggest hits, The Christmas Chronicles Part Two looks awfully cheap. The CGI effects are mostly terrible, the army of elves in particular looking like something from an under-resourced animated film and the less said about the horrible “Yulecat” the better. The elves are a cross between the Minions from the Despicable Me franchise and the nasties from Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984) but without any of the things that made either of them so much fun.

The first film might have been lightweight but that was part of its limited charm. This one – written by Columbus and Matt Lieberman – is far too convoluted, plot threads peeling off into not terribly interesting diversions, presumably to distract away from the fact that the main plot is even more flimsy than the origin. The pacing is off too. The minor conflicts – chiefly Kate’s distrust of her potential new stepfather – takes up the first half hour and a lengthy epilogue where the sugary Christmas feel-good is piled on so hard it could induce comas in the diabetic. There’s a flashback/origin story that no-one needed and there are just too many diversions and distracting subplots, including a mawkish trip back in time to Boston in 1990, a fatal move when the main plot isn’t all that to begin with.

There’s no real jeopardy or menace, never any sense that things will work out any other way than you predict within the first few minutes. There are no surprises here, nothing to make you sit up and think “I didn’t see that coming.” The (very) mild subversiveness that could just be glimpsed in the first film is entirely missing here, the big musical number at the airport (featuring Darlene Love, singer of the perennial Yuletide favourite Christmas (Please Come Home) and Roger Murtaugh’s wife in the Lethal Weapon films) is fun but not a patch on the Elvis routine from the first film and for no reason whatsoever, Santa has developed some Matrix (1999)-inspired super-powers.

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On the plus side there are a few decent sight gags here and there – Santa nods off while watching a television broadcast of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) dubbed into elvish and Santa Village’s cinema switching between screenings of Bad Santa (2003) and Elf (2003) as the evil is eradicated – but it’s not really enough. But the film is 50% better whenever Russell, who gets all the best bits of business, is on screen and Hawn is the icing on the cake an they at least make the whole miserable affair that bit more bearable. Given that Netflix have a more-or-less captive audience, particularly in the COVID ravaged winter of 2020, there’s no doubt that a third film will materialise eventually, particularly as it matched the first film’s opening weekend viewing figures. Netflix allowed it to be the first of their in-house productions to get a theatrical release, opening in 32 cinemas in three American cities just prior to the streaming release.