What chance would you have to become a well-adjusted human being if your brother were Santa Claus? No matter what you did, people would always love your brother more. So it’s no wonder that Fred Claus (Vince Vaughn) has become a ne’er-do-well with a lot of resentment towards his saintly bro (Paul Giamatti). Still, when Fred gets in trouble, he has nowhere to go but the North Pole, where Nick puts him to work among the elves. Naturally, massive screw-ups ensue that threaten the very future of Christmas itself, and it’s up to Fred to summon the inner resources to set everything aright.
Fred Claus isn’t a great movie, maybe not even a good one, but it does have one inspired sequence where Fred attends a support group for men resentful over living in the shadows of their more famous and accomplished brothers. (Among its members are Frank Stallone, Roger Clinton, and Stephen Baldwin, all playing themselves.) Fred is at first heartened to discover other guys who share his unique problem, but then they all dismiss him as a joke because no one believes him when he says his brother is St. Nicholas.
Giamatti is surprisingly wry as the decent brother exasperated by Fred’s foul-ups, but the movie is Vaughn’s and he puts his usual fast-talking hustler persona to good use. Indeed, there are a few moments (Fred battling a battalion of Salvation Army Santas inside a Toys R Us, Fred unleashing his inner Elvis and turning Santa’s workshop into party central) that hint at the subversive idea that it might be a lot more fun to be Fred than to be St. Nick.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR2MtdrHCEs]