Klaus - a 2D animated Christmas flick that's actually well worth watching.
The Knight Before Christmas, Let It Snow, Klaus (Netflix)
It used to be there were only two types of Netflix Christmas movies: good-bad and bad-bad. The good-bad ones (A Christmas Prince, mainly) we watched in raptures, sniffling on cue at the sentimental parts while at the same time screaming: "What
am I watching? This movie is terrible, why am I crying?" The bad-bad ones (most of the others) we watched in the hope that they would be good-bad too - but not everyone's a winner.
This year, however, things have become more complicated. For the very first time, at least one new Netflix Christmas movie is actually, genuinely, properly good.
Klaus is a 2D animated feature film from Spanish director Sergio Pablos (and, as creator of the Despicable Me franchise, the man responsible for unleashing the worldwide Minions epidemic). It serves as an alternative Santa Claus origin story, which begins with a lazy and entitled postmaster's son being dispatched to the northernmost town in the land and given a year in which to set up a postal system or else be cut off from the family fortune.
The remote settlement of Smeerensburg is a cold, dark, mean old place, full of menacing children and North Pole nimbys who seem opposed to any type of change and certainly don't want to see a thriving postal service set up in their town. But young Jasper's luck – and his bad attitude – begins to change when he meets Klaus, a gruff old bloke with a big white beard and impossibly sad hobby of making toys for the family he never got to have.
