Saturday, December 11, 1999 

You better watch out

Must Be Santa could make you believe

By BILL BRIOUX
Toronto Sun

Sometimes it does indeed seem like Santa Claus
is dead. 

It seemed that way to me yesterday at noon as I
took a quick walk around The Sun building on
King Street. 

Despite the twinkling icicle lights framing every
other store window, the city and the citizens
seemed bathed in shades of black and grey. The
peppy, piped-in carols, especially Let It Snow, just
sounded ironic in what seemed like early-fall
sunshine. 

Was Christmas, like Santa's former parade patron
Eatons, doomed to fall out of fashion with the
dawning of the new, ozone-depleted millennium? 

It sure seemed that way to me. People hurried
grim-faced across intersections, carefully avoiding
eye contact with the homeless. A fist-fight actually
broke out in the street between two men arguing
over a parking space. And everywhere I saw
horrible headlines about that poor, cut-up child. 
  
So when Santa is dying at the start of Must Be
Santa, it seems somehow fitting. Yes, Virginia, 
there is no Santa Claus. 

The glory of Must Be Santa, however, is that while
it retains the time-honoured sentiment of such
traditional Christmas fables as Miracle On 34th
Street, it is very much a modern Miracle. And not
just because it updates the North Pole as a
high-tech, state-of-the-art computer operation. It
has what every great holiday classic must have --
the power to make us believe all over again. 

At the centre of the story, written by veteran
screenwriter Douglas Bowie (Love And Larceny),
is Floyd Count, played by Second City alumnus
Arnold Pinnock. Count is a petty thief who is trying
to steal a little Christmas for his estranged young
daughter. 

While dodging a security guard at a mall, he runs
smack into Tuttle (Dabney Coleman), the
no-nonsense CEO of the new North Pole. 

Tuttle and his assistant Natalie (a radiant Deanna
Milligan) were at the mall with the dying Santa
(Gerald Parkes), checking out a successor when
Count and Claus smack into each other. During the
fateful and fatal exchange, the Santa torch was
passed to the unsuspecting Count. 

Soon he's being fitted for a red velvet suit. But
whether Count can make a true believer out of
Tuttle -- and ultimately himself -- is the rest of the
movie. 

Now, Count is not your grandfather's Santa Claus.
A tall, young black man, he doesn't fit the
traditional image of the jolly, old elf that has been
the icon of choice ever since Santa started hoisting
back Coca-Colas at the turn of this century. 

That's part of the fun of Must Be Santa, which
plays with all of our fixed notions of exactly who
Santa is and how he should look. 

The other fun is in the production itself.
Considering this two-hour movie was almost
scuttled last spring when the CBC technicians strike
struck, the production values are terrific. 

The special effects, especially a really neat
rollercoaster ride, are fun and seamless. And the
SkyDome Hotel hasn't been used to such good effect since they
kicked that frisky couple out a few seasons ago. 

There are a few false notes. The North Pole looks 
a little too much like the deck of the Starship
Enterprise. There's a completely unnecessary
cameo from always funny Joe Flaherty as that other
Count Floyd. And the father-daughter subplot
seems a bit cloying and contrived. 

But, hey, a Grinch could pick holes in Miracle On
34th Street, too. This is one good-looking St.
Nick, in every sense.