Holiday Film Review: Finding Mrs. Claus (dir by Mark Jean)


Mrs. Claus (Mira Sorvino) has left the North Pole and is living it up in Las Vegas!

Now, don’t panic.  The plot of 2012’s Finding Mrs. Claus does not involve the Kringles going to divorce court.  Can you imagine how traumatic that would be?  It would ruin Christmas for everyone and I have a feeling that Santa probably wouldn’t put much effort into his job afterwards.  Or, even worse, the court might award the Workshop to Mrs. Claus and she might let her new boyfriend, Tony the Gigolo, take over the business.  If that ever happens, I hope everyone’s okay with their chimneys smelling like Axe body spray on Christmas morning.

Fortunately, Mrs. Claus and Kris (Will Sasso) are still very much in love.  It’s just that Mrs. Claus gets upset when she sees how exhausted Kris is at the end of the day.  When she comes across a letter from a little girl in Las Vegas who wants her mom to find a new husband for Christmas, Mrs. Claus decides to give her husband a break and take care of it herself.  With the help of Calvin the Elf (Geoff Gustafson), she loses his white wig and her old German clothes and she is transformed into …. well, Mira Sorvino.  Mrs. Claus heads to Las Vegas, intent on spreading Christmas cheer.

Kris, when he wakes up, is not happy to discover that his wife is missing.  Grabbing Calvin, he heads down to Vegas to find her.  (He loses the beard on the way to America.)  If Kris can’t find Mrs. Claus before Christmas, there’s going to be a lot of disappointed children in the world.  While Mrs. Claus tried to find a husband for Noelle (Laura Vandervoort), Kris tries to find his wife.

And yes, as you probably already guessed as soon as I mentioned that this movie takes place in Las Vegas, there is an Elvis impersonator sight gag.  It happens quickly but seriously, it’s a Lifetime Christmas film that’s set in Vegas.  There has to be an Elvis impersonator somewhere!

What’s that?  Do I hear you being cynical out there?  Well, stop it!  It’s a cute movie!  It’s a holiday movie that features Mira Sorvino being glamorous as Mrs. Claus and Will Sasso being cheerfully clueless as Santa.  Both Sorvino and Sasso really throw themselves into their roles and the fact that both of them are so well-intentioned but yet so naive about life outside of the North Pole actually make their story a rather sweet one.  While Mrs. Claus understood the importance of blending in with Las Vegas, Santa never seemed to get why anyone would doubt him when he explained what he did for a living.

In the end, this is the type of silly, sentimental, and earnest film that works nicely during the holidays.  The holiday season is a good time to be reminded that not everything has to be dark and depressing.  Towards the end of the film, a character spots a shooting star and makes a wish and it’s hard not to feel that it’s a moment that the film has earned.

I enjoyed it.  It’s a merry film.