Santa with Muscles

1996 Christmas comedy

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A millionaire is chased by police after some wild driving while on his way to some paintball shenanigans. He hides out in a shopping mall and puts on a Santa Claus outfit to elude the po-po, but an accident knocks him out and gives him amnesia so that he actually believes he's Santa Claus. A shady character named Lenny tries to take advantage of them, and the duo try to save an orphanage from evil scientists.

I wanted to give this a try to see if there's a worse Christmas movie than Sinbad and Arnold Schwarzennegar's big F-U to Christmas. The best thing I can probably say about this one (and that one) is that it's not as offensive to Christmas as a Santa Claus who molests children would be. But it's closer than you'd think. I'm trying to decide who you'd have to consider dumber--screenwriters Jonathan Bond, Fred Mata, and Dorrie Krum Raymond who have a grand total of zero other writing credits to their names because they were more than likely blacklisted after this came out or the characters they create. The characters are all pretty stupid, so that's also closer than you might think. Now, if I had blog readers, one of them would argue with me that this is completely harmless. On the contrary, this movie is so dumb that watching it could give a person brain damage. Not only that, I think I now hate Christmas because of this movie. I also hate professional wrestling, magic crystals, orphans, bodybuilding supplements, paintball, SUV's, science, Mila Kunis, and puns. Oh, and Christmas. What? I already typed that? See, that's probably an effect of watching this movie. I would wonder if Hulk Hogan's terrible performance, one that is really one of the worst you'll ever see, was the result of him watching this movie, but I can't think of how that would be possible and my head hurts just thinking about it. He's so bad here when he's not beating up scientists, but in his defense, the script doesn't help him out much. There's one great scene after the bad guys are defeated (oh, c'mon--like you were A) going to watch this, B) get to this part of the movie, and C) not know how it was going to end) and the Hulkster says something about how one of the bad guys needs to go defrost himself and then laughs. It's a thing of beauty, ladies and gentlemen. I've not really experienced the magic that is Hulk Hogan outside his early wrestling career, another movie or two, and a terrible venture into rock 'n' roll that I happen to own on cassette.


That album, by the way, makes Randy "The Macho Man" Savage's rap music album seem as good as Abbey Road. Oh hell, who am I kidding? The Macho Man's rap album is gold anyway. But I digress. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember how I was going to follow the "I've not really experienced the magic that is Hulk Hogan" idea that I started above. I'm distracted by wondering if it's really fair to have one movie that has both Hulk Hogan and Clint Howard in it. This one does, and that just doesn't seem right to other movie makers. Can't you just imagine a film producer saying the following:

"What? Cabin Fever Entertainment, distributor of Silence of the Hams, is releasing a movie with Hulk Hogan and Clint Howard? And Hulk Hogan has hair? And Clint Howard is playing a cop? That's it, everybody. Wrap it up. We're giving up here."

I just read that the original author of this gem sued to have his name removed, supposedly because the story had been changed so much. But really, anybody who sees this is going to know the real reason.

This and Jingle All the Way double feature! I want to meet the man who can stomach that onslaught.

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