0:05:00 -- The movie opened in the spectacular fashion one comes to expect from movies made especially for basic cable television. We opened with Paul Sorvino, in my opinion one of the greatest living actors, playing a Santa Claus leading his elves in a pilates class while some generic Christmas song blared. According to the song, "Christmas is coming," so, you know, great. We then jumped to New York to see Jenny McCarthy's high powered businesswoman character Mary Class. She and her assistant blathered on for a while about what they did but all I can tell you is that it's one of those jobs everyone who's not a cop or firefighter in NYC seems to have in movies in which you have to shout into your cell phone non stop. Not sure if the other guy in the room is her husband or boyfriend but his name is Luke and he's a mailman who worries that people just don't have the Christmas spirit. Somehow, they managed to fill this role with Dean McDermott, a man the internet assures me is famous for being married to Tori Spelling. My biggest surprise is that this movie was directed by Ron Underwood who also did the very funny City Slickers. He also directed the famously awful Eddie Murphy film Adventures of Pluto Nash which is why he's now doing basic cable films with Jenny McCarthy.
Only a director like Ron Underwood would have the guts to show us Santa Claus' ass up close.0:10:00 -- I've just discovered that Mary is the daughter of Santa Claus. I found this out when Santa showed up at a party she was throwing for her business colleagues as part of a jazz quartet and no, you didn't just misread that. I still don't know what the hell Mary does but whatever it is, everyone else at the party did it too. Luke showed up wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket to a party at which every other man was wearing a business suit because his goal was apparently to embarrass Mary in front of her pretentious friends by looking out of place and acting so uncomfortable that you'd think one of the other guys there had just shot his dog. Anyway, Mary is wondering why Santa-Dad isn't at the North Pole since it's only 10 days till Christmas and Santa said, "Well why aren't YOU at the North Pole." I'm sure there's a fascinating backstory here and I sincerely hope I won't doze off and miss finding out what it is.
0:25:00 -- From what I can gather, in the first movie, Mary saved Christmas. I'm not sure how but Christmas is always portrayed as a fairly fragile thing in fiction like this that constantly needs saving. She did such a good job that Santa felt he was no longer needed which is why he joined the jazz quartet. Anyway, Luke agrees to watch out for Mary's dad and an elf named Skip who came along with him. He takes them to a mall and Santa acts completely taken aback by the concept of mall Santas. Through a series of wacky and easy avoidable circumstances, the three wind up in jail and Mary insists they all head back to the North Pole, a place that is apparently a short driving distance from New York. After Luke and Mary go to their room and fuck (offscreen but they do it), Mary goes to visit the toy workshop and sees it running efficiently. Still pumped up from all the sex chemicals that had been released into her system less than an hour ago, Mary tells the elves that she's back in charge but they don't seem excited because the place has been running very efficiently thanks to a woman named Teri who was working in the mail room and just sort of took over. Mary seems upset even though she wanted to go home anyway. Teri seems nice enough except that she gets a sly, evil looking expression every time there's no one else around. Eek. Teri, as you can see below, is also kind of hot. Maybe she and Mary will end up making out.
When did Tina Fey become one of Santa's elves?0:50:00 -- Teri, the elf who totally rocks the sexy librarian look, is in fact evil. She managed to convince the elves to go on strike. Luckily for her, Mary is from the world of big business and thus is the type of person who thinks Chinese factory workers have it too soft and will engage in union busting just for the sake of doing so. She offers to let the elves take a break every six hours and walks out of the room then tries to be a scab and make all the toys herself, a fairly simple job that she fucks up in a manner both spectacular and spectacularly unfunny. Why she won't just let Teri take over is a mystery since she says she wants to go home and she'd better go home soon as her chief rival, a guy whose English accent reveals him as being worse than the Devil, has been undermining her while she's been gone in whatever the hell it is they do. Teri's also been subtly letting Luke know that she'd be available to have him deck her halls any time he wanted to but Luke has apparently never had a woman show interest in him before and thinks that the kittenishly playful way she helps him make cookies is her way of being nice. Did I mention Luke is kind of thick headed?
1:03:00 -- Mary has decided to pack up and leave but Luke says he's happy there and won't be going back with her. It's very sad and, as we all know, there's no vaccine against sadness and, if there was, Jenny McCarthy wouldn't take it anyway. Luke is now vulnerable to Teri's charms but makes the mistake of letting it slip that Mary has left just before Teri's going to put her head in his lap. Oh, she was going to. She made him brownies and that always leads to oral but she abandoned Luke and ran back to the workshop to end the elf strike and get the toy shop up and running again. Teri's organizational skills and her skill in dealing with the elves means she should probably be in charge anyway even though she's evil. Mary, meanwhile, is back in New York putting her business back together. Her nemesis, the British douchebag, has suddenly become her ally and potential new romantic partner. I'm sure this will end well.
1:24:00 -- Santa has a change of heart and decides to come out of retirement and take over the shop, much to Teri's dismay. Like Mary, he gives Teri zero recognition for the work she's done and figures she'll just go back to the mailroom. After he says this, Santa mysteriously disappears. The elves don't question any of this because they're idiotic, weak-minded fools who are easily manipulated by Teri's Jedi mind tricks. She's not ready for when Mary suddenly returns from New York because she has figured out Teri's secret. It turns out Teri is actually an elf named Phoebe. I'll be honest and say that I had no idea I wasn't supposed to think she was an elf all along. She's short and has a squeaky voice. I'd be upset by this if I actually gave a crap about this movie. While Mary frees her dad from the giant gift box in which he'd been trapped, Phoebe takes off with the sleigh and all the toys. She leads them on a merry chase until they get to a fishing shack with a hole in the ice over which Phoebe has suspended the bag of toys. At this point, I'd like to question how all the toys for all the children in the world fit into a bag small enough to drop through a 4 foot icehole. I'd also like to question how the Sun can be up at the North Pole at Christmastime. These questions do not get answered but that could be because Ron Underwood is saving them for Santa Baby 3. Anyway, Mary, Santa and Luke make an emotional plea to Phoebe and she has a change of heart because, well, fuck it, she just does. Unfortunately, as she reaches out to hug everyone, she drops the bag. Luckily, the elf Skip had loaded a bag of cookies onto the sleigh instead of the toys which means everything's OK. Mary helps Santa deliver the toys, Luke goes back to town and Phoebe lets Skip know that, in thanks for saving the toys, he's about to get his bells jingled. Mary then starts a new life of splitting her time between being a high powered...ad exec? Lawyer? Stock broker? I don't know. Anyway, she does that and then goes back to the North Pole on the weekends and I guess that's a happy ending. It's an ending, at least. Hopefully, I have angered Jenny McCarthy by vaccinating you against ever wanting to see this movie.
Close your mouth, Jenny. AND MERRY CHRISTMAS, ONE AND ALL.
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