This movie is pretty much exactly what’s wrong with Hollywood. The “plot” (or, more accurately, marketing gimmick) revolves around the “new idea” that a lot of the most famous characters on Earth (Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc.) are actually action heroes that fight the forces of darkness. It employs the trendy mass-market concept of taking a lot of characters everyone on the planet knows and thinking it’s novel to bundle them altogether, both as a gesture of faux-originality and because it probably increases the global marketshare. This is a formula for opening cash registers, not really a movie.
What Works: That being said, your kids will probably love it. And there are certainly worse things they could learn in a movie this year besides believing in yourself and being pure of hear or whatever the fuck the characters were saying. There’s an innocence on the surface that will be good for them, even as there’s a very cynical marketing plan right beneath it. [Not unlike Hotel Transylvania or TV’s Once Upon a Time.]
What Doesn’t Work: The first paragraph of this review points to problems of the soul of this movie, but I also thought the animation was pretty cruddy and the execution wasn’t top-notch either. It works as a message for small children and a commercial product, but as a movie? There’s not much to recommend at all, I’m afraid.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Probably gone to watch Killing Them Softly a second time instead.