“…and a G.I. Joe with a kung-fu grip; oh Santa I’ve been ever so good… Santa?”
If I caught Santa’s Slay on a different day I could just as easily have given it a flogging. After all it is a pretty one note effort revolving around a premise Futurama introduced a decade or so ago. But on this particular night I guess I was just ready to see a decidedly un-jolly Saint Nick laying waste to half the population of a small hick town in ‘nowhere USA’ (probably somewhere, I didn’t care).
The introductory five minutes sets the tone and in reality provides the highlight of the film, when Santa (Bill Goldberg) interrupts a dinner party with perhaps a half dozen of the more obnoxious personality types in attendance.
Don’t believe me? Fran Drescher is there. Need more proof? Chris Kattan is there. And James Caan.
So after interrupting some of the most brain-deadening repartee in history, Santa gets to ticking things off his list, specifically by impaling, decapitating or setting fire to one and all.
So in summary Santa gate-crashes a party full of people I would like killed. And kills them. Wow, Santa got me just what I asked for this Christmas! I must have been a good boy indeed…
The rest of the film goes downhill but thankfully not at the same pace as Lindsay Lohan’s career. It’s just that when you slaughter ‘the Nanny’ in the opening scene there isn’t anything you can do to top it without bringing in Paris Hilton and a meat cleaver. And alas that didn’t happen.
Anyway, in a bison-drawn sleigh Santa moves about the snow covered town summarily judging one and all as naughty and offing them in increasingly one-note fashion. But it isn’t as random as it might appear, Santa has a special mission this year. Apparently Satan’s kids had a bet of sorts a thousand years ago with the winner running the 25th December their way. However the bet only ran for a millennium and the approaching Christmas represents the year after the 999th anniversary.
Initially oblivious to all this is Nicolas and his Gen Y girlfriend Mary (she all confrontational and self-assured and shit), who are pursued all over the town unaware that it is all due to Nicolas’ paranoid lunatic of a shut in Grandpa, a guy who for some reason hates Christmas…
With the comedic juice long since squozen from the limited premise it was always inevitable that the ending would disappoint. Nonetheless I consider Santa’s Slay almost mandatory viewing for those who take the Festive Season a little too seriously, or for those who wish it wasn’t taken less seriously at times.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. It’s terrible, but everyone should watch Santa fuck shit up at least once in their lives.
Merry Christmas.
OGR
