Klaus (2019) - Movie Review

This film, an animated Netflix-exclusive release, is the product of an alternate reality. A reality as gleamed at by writer/director Sergio Pablos, an animator who assisted in some of Disney’s later Renaissance efforts and the man behind the source material for last year’s Smallfoot. It is a reality where, instead of CGI becoming the standard, traditional animation continued to be the norm. I am no nearly well-versed enough in multiverse theory to even attempt to figure out how to see this reality for myself, but if the films of that timeline looks half as good as this, then hot damn, we’ve been missing out.

The fact that this the product of traditional hand-crafted animation could easily be missed. This is possibly due to modern sensibilities being so used to computers doing the work these days, but from what I can tell, it’s mainly because the film looks that damn good. It’s basically the animation tricks of old, combined with an understanding of artificial lighting and textures that artists have been using for centuries to emulate three-dimensional detail on a two-dimensional plane. It is frankly stunning to look at, and the moodiness of every single frame is staggering, whether it’s the joyous lights of the festive season or the morbid dreariness of an entire town fighting with each other.

Yeah, this is as about as devoid of saccharine as it is possible for a modern Christmas film to get nowadays. It involves a spoiled man-child of a postman who, after lounging it in his job for so long, gets kicked into an assignment on an island town in the Arctic where no-one sends any mail. The depiction we get of the townsfolk basically leaves the latest Addams Family feature in the dust, as the levels of violent slapstick on display here are gleefully rich. From snowball fights to cannons to The Great Mooning of ’86, even loudness wars, it all makes for quite fun stuff and a great introduction into the hotbed of grudges that is the town of Smeerensburg.

From there, the film basically reverse-engineers every aspect of the Santa Claus mythos. The reindeer-driven sleigh, the toys, the coal for naughty children, even the worker elves (who in this film are depicted as the native Sámi tribe) are given quite a bit of realism through a lens of never-ending cynicism. Like, it is genuinely bizarre thinking that this is what passes for a Christmas film, with a story about a postman who is in it purely for his own gratification conjuring up what we know today as the holly-jolly hero of children everywhere.

It’s bizarre… but also the reason why this is the perfect Christmas film for today’s audiences. The film never shies away from how self-serving its main character and his key mission is, with Jason Schwartzman’s performance as the postman Jesper nailing every line from the portrayals of his ambitions to his sarcastic quips about the townsfolk. On that note, this is easily one of the sassiest films I’ve ever reviewed on here, as there is a lot of delicious snark to be found here.

This is going to sound like a stark contrast to what I’ve just put forward, but my labelling this as perfection goes for the festive sentiment as well. As much as this film plays into certain tropes connected to more recent Yuletide fare, it doesn’t strain for seasonal feels. Much like the townsfolk and Jesper himself, it kind of… stumbles into it. Honestly, part of it reads like the most corporate thing in the world, cutting down the sentiment of the season and revealing the self-serving commerce at its heart. I mean, Christmas as the West knows it is pretty much just a massive excuse to buy shit; this would only support that.

Except that flies in the face of the film’s main creed: A true act of goodwill always sparks another. Yes, this is depicted as a tradition that was started for selfish reasons… but it’s hard to argue with how much it changes the people in the town. The film’s backstory for the town is that it’s built on the centuries-long grudge between two families, whose constant fighting and public displays of malice is viewed as them keeping up with tradition.

But once Klaus’ toys start to circulate, and giving the town a look at what can happen if they start being nice to each other, that attitude becomes threatened. It can easily be argued that all traditions, including the one behind Smeerensburg’s residents, were likely started out of a seemingly-innocuous singularity of a moment that blossomed into something people keep doing. This is just an example of replacing one tradition with another, one that rewards goodwill toward man rather than engender hostility toward man.

And that is what makes this perfect: That should-be-impossible tightrope walk of acknowledging modern-day cynicism, while still using it as a gateway to a genuinely optimistic and almost-rustic mood. The animation on its own is a great example of this mindset in action, wielding the tried-and-true techniques of the past and incorporating modern-day sophistication to create something truly special. The humour, the festive cheer, the music, the acting (J.K. Simmons is now officially the only Santa); it’s all fantastic, to the point where this film’s place as one of the greatest animation achievements of the 21^st century is almost a footnote compared to everything else. This is a brilliant film, and it looks like I can stop rabbiting on about Smallfoot because I have a whole new ‘go-to animated film recommendation’ to talk about.