"Als der Weihnachtsmann vom Himmel fiel" or "When Santa Fell to Earth" is a German German-language movie from 2011, so this one is already over five years old. Of course, the title already implies that these 105 minutes are something for the holidays. It is possibly the most known work by director Oliver Dieckmann. The novel this is based on is by Cornelia Funke and she has actually more known works under her belt, such as the Inkheart film or the "Wilde Hühner" movies. Her stuff got adapted several times. But back to this one here. The cast includes a handful decent actors such as Jessica Schwarz, Charly Hübner or Fritz Karl, but sadly these do not have the screen time or material to really make a difference. The child actors, however, do, but sadly they are just mediocre at best. And same goes for Alexander Scheer who plays the most beardless and youngest version of Santa Claus you have ever seen. Of course, they tried to justify it throughout the entire movie, but hands down the villain character (played nicely by Volker Lechtenbrink) was correct when he asks the kids if they have ever seen a Santa like that. No we have not. And we don't want to. This attempt to really make a difference and make the film attractive to younger audiences who may have seen and like Scheer in other projects did really backfire. I may be a bit biased here as I also don't see much range in Scheer, but he was just totally miscast. He could have played an elf, but that's it.
Anyway, as for the story, it had an okay moment here and there, but for a film that is as close to two hours as it is to 90 minutes, it just wasn't convincing enough and there were several segments when I felt it dragged quite a bit. Christmas films are always about movie magic and I did not have a single magic moment while watching unfortunately. And they are also a lot about the music, but other than one or two occasions when we hear the melody of known Christmas songs, it also comes very short to that regard. The soundtrack adds more cringe than quality and the songs just weren't working at all for me. Overall, the result is disappointing. I do believe that the story and also the cast they got offered room for and the possibility of a quality movie that could be a really good watch for the holidays. But they disappointed so much. And this is especially baffling as so many people worked on the script, but not only did they apparently not recognize each other's mistakes, but maybe they all brought the worst of it inside this film. Major thumbs-down from me. This is not a film that will get you in the spirit. Watch something else instead.
