Kiwi Christmas

Take it at face value. It's a kid's Christmas movie with a different theme to the regular cookie cutter format and a great cast with a good script. The production value is pretty great for the budget they worked with and it was genuinely pretty entertaining.

Anyone rating this lowly must surely be forgetting all of this. Take a step back and realise who the target market is and it will be more clear.

If someone asked me what Christmas is like in New Zealand, I would point them at this film for a light hearted answer. It encompasses a lot of the feeling of the holidays that we have in NZ that other countries miss out on.

I needed a break from the Hallmark formula movie and a Christmas movie filmed in New Zealand with an all-NZ cast sounded worth giving it a try. The movie falls within the "burned-out Santa" genera. In this version, Santa has grown very tired of spoiled kids wanting ever more expensive toys. He longs for the days when kids could be happy by the simplicity of Christmas. A few days before December 25th, he decides to turn his back on it all, get in his very-cool looking rocket-sled and fly south to find sunshine and warm weather. Most santas would just go to Florida, but this one makes it to New Zealand where he is shot down by a kid playing with fireworks. After crash landing into the ocean, he changes his name to "Stan" to hide his identity and befriends the kid who shot him down. The kid is camping with his parents who are doing a trial separation but decide to go camping together for the holidays. A NZ border inspector who takes her job way too seriously spends the entire movie hunting for Santa and his crashed sleigh because he might have brought some some fruit flies into the country. While Santa hangs with the family to evade the inspectors, a couple of incidents happen that cause the parents to reconsider their relationship and Santa his purpose. I'll stop there, you can probably guess how this movie will end.

Regarding the movie itself, yes I did get my NZ scenery and actor fix and it was not Hallmark-like. That was refreshing. Characters were one-dimensional and shallow. Storyline was one very long chase scene broken up by some bonding scenes that revolve around a cricket match....never seen that in a Christmas movie before! Laura Daniel's portrayal of the inspector quickly became very tiresome and I just wanted to move on to something else. But in the last 20-ish minutes, Sia Trokenheim and Xavier Horan kicked their acting into second gear and I really started to enjoy their interactions. It salvaged the movie just enough for me to make it to the "meh" ending.

If you are looking for a movie filmed in a place and actors you have never seen, then its probably worth your time to watch for the novelty of it all. Otherwise, you will probably just want to go back to a Hallmark movie.

This is a low budget, Kiwi made, kids movie and if I was a kid I would probably give it 9 or 10 stars. Well done to those involved in the making of this flick.

Great to see most males wearing sandals here in this movie. It was the females who seemed to not want to wear them in this flick. It just looks way more natural to see sandals with shorts. No shoes or socks. Why can't the US be that way? The storyline was similar to Santa Who? And several other American Christmas movies, but I would pick this one over most of the others because of the location and also the logical attire. There is some cheesiness in the acting of some people and some characters are ridiculous. The security woman is a character I really thought could have been better done. Everybody pulls together to try to save Christmas in the end and I will watch again.

There weren't any reviews yet so I wanted to take a minute to say a few nice things about this movie, which I enjoyed. This was cute and fun. After turning off a couple of Hallmark romances I was glad to watch a Christmas movie of a different kind. I think this is the first Christmas movie I've ever watched that takes place in the southern hemisphere, so that was different and interesting. The humor is pretty juvenile and there was an annoying conflict with a coast-guard type woman but everything else was much better. I enjoyed the romance between the two parents who are on the verge of divorce - there was great chemistry there and a story that can appeal to older viewers, though the movie is definitely geared towards kids. Grumpy Santa was fun. The graphics of the North Pole and the sleigh were pretty good, I thought. This is definitely not a universal recommendation, but if you're looking for something a little bit different, I definitely don't regret watching it.