Christmas in Wonderland (2007)
Three kids and their Dad move from L.A to Edmonton. When they go shopping at West Edmonton Mall they find counterfeit cash. They inadvertently help catch the crooks, and later make a discovery about Santa
rating 4/10 User rating 89 votes 55% ❄ Christmas Connection
Three kids stumble onto counterfeit cash while Christmas shopping at a massive Canadian mall, with a Royal Canadian Mounted Police inspector in hot pursuit of the bumbling crooks.
Our Review
When Santa Leaves the Wrong Bag
Every holiday season churns out a fresh batch of family comedies where lovable misfits stumble into Christmas magic. Christmas in Wonderland (2007) takes that formula and drops it inside the largest mall in Canada, surrounds it with counterfeit cash and bumbling crooks, and somehow convinces Patrick Swayze, Tim Curry, and Carmen Electra to show up. The result is exactly as gloriously uneven as that sounds.
Director James Orr chose West Edmonton Mall as his setting because of its, in his own words, "Land of Oz" quality. Walking through its 5.3 million square feet, you understand the comparison. There are roller coasters, a full indoor water park, an ice rink, and enough retail square footage to swallow several city blocks. As a backdrop for a family Christmas adventure, it delivers an absurd, glittering spectacle that no studio backlot could fake.
The Setup: LA Family, Edmonton Winter
The Saunders family has just relocated from sunny Los Angeles to Edmonton, Alberta, and the kids are not thrilled. Dad Wayne (Swayze) is doing his best, taking the three children -- teenage Brian, preteen Danny (Cameron Bright), and young Mary -- Christmas shopping at the mall while Mom is stuck waiting for a delayed flight. When Mary spots a bag full of cash on the ice rink and assumes Santa dropped it, she and Brian pocket it without a second thought.
The money is counterfeit, of course. It belongs to the Cardoza brothers, Leonard (Chris Kattan) and Sheldon (Preston Lacey), who planned to use it to buy expensive gifts and pocket real change from distracted holiday cashiers. Their scheme unravels the moment the kids make off with their stash. Hot on everyone's trail is Inspector Gordon McLoosh of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, played by Tim Curry in a Scottish-Canadian accent that defies easy categorization.
The Cast Makes It Work (Mostly)
Tim Curry steals every single scene he inhabits. His McLoosh is a walking comedy of errors -- overly dignified, perpetually late, and blessed with the kind of theatrical gravitas that turns throwaway lines into genuine laughs. Curry has spent decades proving he can elevate middling material through sheer force of commitment, and he does it again here.
Chris Kattan and Preston Lacey as the criminal brothers land squarely in the Home Alone tradition of slapstick villainy. They fall down, crash into things, and suffer the kind of indignities that delight the eight-year-old crowd. Carmen Electra plays Ginger Peachum, the sharp-dressed mastermind pulling their strings, and she plays the role with a cool amusement that suggests she knows exactly what kind of movie she is in.
Swayze, for his part, plays the harried dad with genuine warmth. He is not asked to do much beyond look charming and react to chaos, and he handles both without breaking a sweat. Watching him now, knowing that he would be diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer just a few months after filming wrapped in June 2007, the performance carries a bittersweet weight the film never intended.
A Mall Movie That Earns Its Location
What separates Christmas in Wonderland from the generic holiday pack is how hard it leans into West Edmonton Mall as a character in its own right. Chase sequences wind through the ice rink, past the food court fountains, and through the kind of crowded holiday corridors that trigger universal shopping-season anxiety. If you grew up visiting WEM in the 2000s, the film doubles as a time capsule: stores that no longer exist, decor that was already being dismantled by the time the movie hit Canadian theaters, and a specific late-2000s energy that is hard to manufacture.
The counterfeit money plot is thin and the script does not pretend otherwise. Orr keeps things moving at a pace that prevents the audience from sitting too long with the logical gaps. The kids are likable enough, the adults are game, and the holiday decorations are relentless. It is more mall-commercial than cinema, but it is a very cheerful mall commercial.
Christmas Credentials
The film is soaked in Christmas: carols on the soundtrack, decorations in every frame, a six-year-old's absolute certainty that a bag of cash is a gift from Saint Nick. The holiday setting is not incidental -- the entire plot hinges on the fact that counterfeiters can exploit overwhelmed Christmas Eve cashiers who have no time to check bills carefully. It is a surprisingly sharp premise buried inside a very soft movie.
Christmas shopping stress, family relocation anxiety, the magic that kids find in ordinary malls during the season -- the film touches these themes lightly. It never reaches for the tearjerker moments that clog the third acts of better holiday films. What you get instead is a breezy, consequence-free adventure that delivers on its modest promises.
Who Should Watch It
Families with children between six and twelve will find this a comfortable, undemanding watch. Curry completists owe it to themselves to see his McLoosh in full flight. Edmonton locals, or anyone with WEM nostalgia, will enjoy the location work as a pure artifact. Anyone expecting something approaching the craft of a Hallmark original will need to recalibrate expectations downward.
The Rotten Tomatoes score of 0% from critics tells one story. The IMDB score of 4.7 from general audiences tells a somewhat kinder one. The truth lands somewhere in between: this is a film that knows its audience is not critics, and it caters to that audience with unapologetic directness.
West Edmonton Mall still holds regular Christmas events each December, and the Phase Three food court fountains that appear in several chase sequences were renovated after the film's release -- making the movie one of the few permanent records of how that section of the mall looked in its mid-2000s form.
Fun Facts
Filming ran from April 23 to June 8, 2007, meaning the cast and crew spent a spring and early summer inside West Edmonton Mall with Christmas decorations fully installed -- locals reportedly spotted the out-of-season tinsel and spent weeks wondering what was going on.
Director James Orr described West Edmonton Mall as having a "Land of Oz" quality that made it the only logical setting for the film; the mall spans 5.3 million square feet and 48 city blocks.
The film opened theatrically in Canada in November 2007 but did not air in the United States until 2008, when it appeared as part of ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas programming block.
Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in January 2008, just months after wrapping production; Christmas in Wonderland became one of his final feature film roles before his death in September 2009.
Tim Curry played Inspector Gordon McLoosh with a Scottish-Canadian accent -- a creative choice the script does not explain and the film does not question, which somehow makes it funnier.
West Edmonton Mall held the title of world's largest mall from its opening in 1981 until 2004, when the South China Mall claimed the record; at the time of filming, WEM was still the largest mall in Canada and second largest in North America.
The film grossed $694,509 at the Canadian box office -- modest by any measure, but enough to give it a genuine theatrical run before its television premiere.
Cameron Bright, who plays Danny Saunders, appeared in several major productions around this period including X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and the Twilight saga, making him the cast member with the most mainstream franchise credentials at the time.
Cast
