Given the huge popularity of superhero films, it was probably inevitable that some bright spark would come up with the idea of recasting Santa Claus as a comic-book style hero. To many children, he certainly fits the bill – a costumed figure who flies through the air spreading joy and happiness wherever he goes. So it makes a certain sense and was almost certainly going to happen at some point. What a pity then, that it had to happen in a film as appalling as Santaman. The first animated film by director Bret Stern, barely known for making a handful of live-action indie films, it’s an awful film, poorly made, blandly written and eminently forgettable.

Santa (voiced by D.C. Douglas) grows tired of having to deal with out-of-control kids every year, his “naughty-listers as he dubs them,” and decides to put his talents to use all year round as a superhero instead. But he finds himself up against an evil plot to ruin Christmas hatched by one of those “naughty-listers”, a businessman he gave a lump of coal to as a child, and must rely on two human children and the gadgets designed by his NASA-style support team. He rounds up a few low-level criminal types (who wear face masks and stripey tops) along the way before setting out to save Christmas once and for all. The rest you can work out for yourselves…

That really is it as far as plot goes. There have been plenty of vacuous, plot-light Christmas films over the years, but this takes the biscuit. The CGI animation itself isn’t bad, par for the course for this sort of thing, but the character designs are terrible. They look like first draft takes on the characters, slightly oddly built and with nothing to make them stand out as individuals. A decade earlier and it might have been acceptable, but by 2022, only those cheap knock offs, often made in Germany (the infamous Dingo Pictures were a particular offender) of bigger budgeted American films that littered the shelves of pound shops around the world. It started out as a live-action film until an intern at Bret Stern Productions showed off some animated proof of concept pieces that they’d done, and the decision was made to switch to animation, despite Stern having no experience in the field. The results look like it was made by interns too…

Time slows down under the film’s insidious influence, its 87 minutes stretching out before you like an eternity. Everything here – the story, the characters, time itself – feels like it’s moving in slow motion as it rumbles on towards its uninspired ending (Santa doesn’t even save the day – that’s done by one of the supporting characters). It fails as both a Santa film (this Claus isn’t particularly likable) and goes nowhere as a superhero film. One suspects that thoughts were entertained of a franchise – fat chance. Once the idea of Santa as a superhero is dealt with, Stern’s screenplay has nothing left to offer.

Curiously, it’s main source of inspiration seems to have been another Santa Claus film that aimed to do something new with the character but with also fell apart once its idea had been established. With its emphasis on an embittered villain who was given a lump of coal by Santa as a child, it resembles nothing so much as a cheap, animated remake of Eshom and Ian Nelms’ Fatman (2020), which had starred a grizzled Mel Gibson as the man in the red suit. In both films, Santa is portrayed as being at the end of his tether over naughty children, and both feature a spoiled brat who grows up so angered by a childhood slight that he becomes a maniacal murderer. For all its faults, Fatman is preferable to this.

There’s really little point in harping on at any great length about Santaman. It isn’t worth your time watching it and even the most undemanding kids are likely to get bored with it. There’s nothing here they haven’t seen done much better many times before and with its bland voice performances, non-descript music and a plot that trudges forward like its being dragged through treacle, it’s unlikely to ever become anyone’s favourite Yuletide entertainment. In fact, Santaman is so awful that it originally slipped out on DVD in the States in a decidedly unseasonal July 2022, perhaps everyone involved hoping that, by December, kids wouldn’t notice it. Very wise…