I’m a symbol of the human ability to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the greater part of our lives.
Miracle on 34th Street
(1994)
(SPOILERS) There are sentiments in the original Miracle on 34th Street, but it
isn’t weighed down with sentiment, and it has a “serious” message amid the wit
and frivolity, but it isn’t overburdened by it. There’s a romance, but it’s
breezy rather than stodgy, and there’s an obligatory cute kid, but she isn’t
horribly precocious. And, of course, Santa Claus features, but he isn’t impossibly
twinkly and ineffectual. In short, Les Mayfield’s remake makes heavy weather of
everything that was sharp and inspired about the 1947 movie, and shoots the
whole thing through a nightmarish soft-focus gauze designed to add to the
viewer’s distress.
It’s also a good twenty minutes longer, and boy, does it
feel it. You have to wonder what happened to John Hughes post-Home Alone, as he seemed to entirely
lose his creative mojo, content to act as writer-producer on mostly weak/unnecessary
adaptations or remakes (Dennis the Menace,
101 Dalmatians, Flubber, Just Visiting).
The only reason to redo Miracle is if
you can somehow put a different spin on it, rather than basing the project –
seemingly – on how much Sir Dickie resembles like a Coke bottle Saint Nick.
Which simply isn’t enough. Attenborough lends no weight to the role, even when
enraged. He could do with a bit of 10
Rillington Place to punch up his 34th
Street.
Less than a decade earlier, Hughes was still churning out
screenplays filled with pep and vibrancy, but he seems intent on ensuring Miracle is as flaccid and congested as
possible. Most of the principle plot points are the same, but they sprawl by
ambivalently. Instead of a shrink leading Krisk Kringle into the courtroom,
it’s a put-up by evil Joss Ackland (always evil, since Lethal Weapon 2, but barely in the thing –this is the kind a movie
that now needs an obvious villain to work, apparently) inducing an inebriate
“fake” Santa (Jack McGee) to cause an altercation leading to Kris winding up in
court and likely to be put away when the judge (Robert Prosky) rules there is
no Santa Claus.
As before, Kris is defended by a hotshot lawyer (Dylan
McDermott), and as before (but more sickly-sweet in its foregrounding and
emphasis on faith) he’s got a thing for the mother (Elizabeth Perkins) who has
persuaded Kris to fill in as Santa. Did I mention that the kid (Mara Wilson, of
Matilda) – the one brought up not to
buy into Santa fakery – is all kinds of wrong? Smug and preternaturally
confident as only Hollywood brats can be, so you never really believe in Susan
becoming a true believer.
Meanwhile, Perkins is no Maureen O’Hara – she lacks that
warmth – so all you can really see in Dorey
is her draconian parenting. You certainly won’t be able to fathom why
McDermott’s interested. He’s okay, but doesn’t lend Bryan the sense of fun John
Payne brought to the equivalent role in the original (I had in mind that
McDermott was a frequent love interest in such movies, but I’m probably
thinking of Dermot Mulroney). That’s the problem with this all over. It ups the
treacle at the expense of the wit.
The tension between Bryan and Dorey over Susan needing castles
of the air is rather plodding (“Believing
in myths and fantasies just makes you unhappy”), while the idea of Santa
belonging to little ones everywhere (“I
don’t see any harm in her saying hello to an interesting old man”) takes a
rather sinister turn when it’s suggested that Kris be locked away, “so the children of New York are no longer
put at risk”. If the only way you can tackle a modern update of this story
is to suggest Santa might be a paedo, you’re probably best leaving it well
alone. It certainly isn’t a subject you want aired in a nice festive family
movie environment (“You got a thing for
the little ones, huh?”)
Even the court scenes, surely an easy victory, rather fall
down, as Bryan’s evidence uses some of the same ideas as before but misses out
on the broader, crowd-pleasing element. JT Walsh is as great as ever he was as
the prosecution lawyer, particularly exasperated when his wife is called to
testify that he told their daughter Santa existed, but Hughes undoes his case
resting – as per the original – when Walsh’s Collins puts in a bid to prove Santa
doesn’t exist (involving the history of Saint Nick, a colonel who explored the
North Pole, and a reindeer that won’t fly). Kris offers fey, anodyne responses
(his workshops are invisible – and bizarrely, “They’re in the dream world” – and his reindeer fly only on Christmas
Eve). Additionally, it’s the judge who now delivers the get-out-of-jail-free
speech (as a result, the playing with the consumerism/popularity angle in
avoiding proclaiming Santa as a fake is far less lively and provocative),
flourishing a dollar bill issued by the Treasury bearing the words “In God We Trust”, and observing it
refers to “a being just as invisible and
just as present”, which is somehow much less satisfying in its equivocal
philosophical appeasement than the original’s US Postal Service.
Other faces popping up include James Remar, Jane Leeves, Mary
McCormack, Allison Janney, and most surprisingly, and pleasingly, Arthur Dent
himself, Simon Jones (he evidently had an agent attempting to get him US work
in the ‘90s). I wouldn’t go as far as suggesting this Miracle on 34th Street is a terrible movie, but it’s bereft of any reason to be, sitting
unwanted under the tree a week after the big day. It somehow manages to be less
relevant fifty years after the original and is rightly regarded as its footnote
(although, some will no doubt pick this one over the first as it’s in colour,
with an even happier ending).
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.