REVIEW: Get Santa (U)

Christmas is just the time for a fun, tongue-in-cheek caper and Get Santa is perfect to warm the whole family’s hearts during a cold winter and is sure to be festive TV and DVD favourite for years to come.

Santa (Jim Broadbent) has crash landed his sleigh in south London while on a test drive two days before Christmas.

He gets locked up in the fictional Lambeth Prison after trying to catapult his reindeer out of Battersea Dogs home and it falls to Steve (south east London-born former New Cross schoolboy and son of Timothy, Rafe Spall), himself recently released from prison, to get Christmas back on track.

Being a cynical adult, Steve doesn’t believe in Santa so his arm is twisted by nine-year-old son, Tom (newcomer Kit Connor from Purley), to whom he is desperate to prove himself as a father.

Kit Connor, Rafe Spall and the reindeer all get the thumbs up.

Writer and director Christopher Smith has taken a leap from his 15-rated comedy horror Severance into firm U territory with a cosy film that really will entertain the whole family.

Kids will enjoy the fantasy of Santa and the elves and the flatulent reindeer while parents will enjoy the deadpan delivery of Spall’s Steve and the entertaining cameos.

Joanna Scanlan (The Thick of It’s useless Terri Coverly) channels Mrs Trunchbull as the parole officer desperate to send Steve back to prison while Warwick Davis is entertaining as the short-tempered shorty Sally - as in Gunnell, because he’s building a tunnel – who Santa mistakes for an elf.

Everyone will be enchanted by Jim Broadbent’s Father Christmas.

The Oscar winner (for Iris in 2002) has played Santa before in Arthur Christmas and may well be on his way to being the definitive St Nick for English audiences.

The script doesn’t reinvent to folk hero yet Broadbent makes him so warm that by playing the DVD you’ll probably save on your heating bills.

He’s also the counterpoint to the other characters’ deadpan and cynicism.

Just about every scene with him in is deliciously sweet, though he manages to bring a range to one of culture’s most one-dimensional figures.

He’s hilarious in the scenes where the prison barber, played by Boardwalk Empire and Snatch’s Stephen Graham, teaches him to be 'Mad Jimmy Claws' in order to avoid bullying from other inmates.

I’ve been wandering round growling ‘get out of your face’ for a few days now.

And surely there aren’t many kids' films with Santa in corn rows or NWA’s Straight Outta Compton over the top of a slow mo.

Yet, minutes later he had me close to tears as he persuaded the lags he was the real Santa by recounting their Christmas wishes and how they had been scotched.

The story ramps up towards the end with some added Alice and Wonderland-style fantasy, sleigh rides and a police chase.

As you can imagine just reading those words, it’s not especially innovative, but there are some neat touches.

One example is the Tom’s family: it’s a cliché that step parents are rotters but here they’re thoroughly nice.

I don’t want to get carried away with Get Santa. It is fuzzy and pleasant and a lovely Christmas film but it is by no means Citizen Kane.

The plot is - perhaps intentionally - flimsy, derivative and predictable.

Similarly, most of the performers – barring Broadbent, maybe Warwick Davis and the outstanding youngster Kit Connor – barely get out of first gear.

The cast is strong and the performances are fine although the plot-driven script doesn’t demand much of talented actors like of Stephen Graham or Matt King (Peep Show).

In a lead role Rafe is awesome but barely needs to break a sweat, mainly having to deadpan admittedly pleasing lines like ‘he’s a few fries short of a happy meal’.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Get Santa’s a festive blast.

Four out of Five stars.

Get Santa (U) is out Friday, December 5. Running time: 102 minutes.

WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW: