He's after more than just milk and cookies.
Stealing Christmas (2003)
When thief Jack Clayton is about to be caught at the mall, he dresses up as Santa Claus and hops on the bus to Evergreen. He is mistaken for the new Santa at Sarah Gibson's tree store. He is very reluctant at first, but after becoming a part of the town, and falls in love with Sarah, he begins to have second thoughts on robbing Evergreen's bank.
rating 6/10 User rating 26 votes 49% ❄ Christmas Connection
The entire film is set during the Christmas season in a town so devoted to the holiday it's called Evergreen, and the central joke is that a career thief ends up playing Santa Claus for a Christmas tree farm. Jack's transformation is literally measured by how well he inhabits the Santa role. The movie couldn't exist outside of Christmas.
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Our Review
There is a particular tier of Christmas movie that exists somewhere between Hallmark and actual cinema, and Stealing Christmas (2003) lives there comfortably. It premiered on USA Network on November 30, 2003, stars Tony Danza as a thief in a stolen Santa suit, and is exactly as silly as that sounds. It is also, against reasonable expectation, kind of fun.
The setup is efficient, if not subtle. Jack Clayton (Danza) and his partner Harry bungle a department store robbery when Harry decides to go in dressed as Santa Claus. Jack escapes by grabbing a bag full of cash, tossing it into a crowd at the mall entrance, and disappearing into the holiday chaos. He ends up in the small town of Evergreen, where the locals mistake him for the professional Santa they hired to work at a Christmas tree farm run by a widowed mother named Sarah Gibson (Lea Thompson). Jack, needing to lie low, takes the job under the fake name Oscar Burton.
From there, the movie does exactly what you think it does.
The Cast Carrying a Thin Script
Tony Danza built his career on being likable. That's not a slight. Playing charming but not particularly deep characters is a skill, and Danza executes it well here. Jack is never genuinely menacing, which is both the film's biggest weakness and its saving grace. You're never concerned that he'll go through with any actual crime, which means the movie can stay light on its feet.
Lea Thompson does solid work with underwritten material. Sarah is patient, skeptical, and warmer than she initially lets on. Thompson and Danza have real chemistry, and their back-and-forth in the first half of the movie is the best writing the script offers. Angela Goethals plays Sarah's teenager Noelle with enough edge to keep her from being a prop.
Betty White plays Emily Sutton, the local widow who runs a nostalgic Christmas shop in town. Her role is relatively small, but she provides the film's most grounded moments. White was 81 years old when this aired and still consistently delivered more texture in a supporting part than most actors manage in a lead.
Evergreen, British Columbia
The fictional small town of Evergreen was filmed in Vancouver, B.C., which does its usual convincing job standing in for an American town with more Christmas charm than most American towns actually have. The Christmas tree farm setting is used well. There is something genuinely pleasant about the exteriors.
Director Gregg Champion keeps things moving. The script, written by Lloyd 'Lucky' Gold and Greg Taylor, is formulaic but knows what it is. The beats arrive on schedule: Jack is good with kids, Jack starts to feel things, Jack's criminal past threatens the new life, Jack has to choose. The writers don't overthink it, which is probably the right call.
The Redemption Formula and Why It Works Here
The "criminal-goes-straight-at-Christmas" plot is not new. It draws from a long line of Christmas conversion stories, from Charles Dickens onward. What makes Stealing Christmas function is that it never pretends the transformation is complicated. Jack isn't haunted by trauma or fighting addiction. He's just a guy who chose a bad career and hasn't stopped to think about it until a Christmas tree farm in a small town forced the issue.
That simplicity keeps the movie honest in a strange way. It's not reaching for emotional depth it doesn't have. The movie knows it's a light TV comedy about a thief who learns to like Christmas, and it delivers that with reasonable competence.
The climax involves Harry showing back up to pressure Jack into robbing the local bank, which gives the film a brief moment of actual stakes. The resolution is predictable but satisfying enough. Emily Sutton's Christmas shop plays a surprisingly pivotal role in the final act, which is a nice structural choice by the writers.
Is Stealing Christmas Worth Watching?
The honest answer is: it depends what you want. If you're looking for a Christmas movie you can watch while wrapping presents, one that won't demand your full attention but won't insult your intelligence either, Stealing Christmas does the job. The runtime is comfortable. The cast is likable. The town looks appropriately festive.
If you're looking for a Christmas classic that holds up to repeat viewing and earns its place in the canon, keep looking. The film has no memorable lines, no standout set pieces, and no real surprises. It holds a 5.8 on IMDB and a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is an accurate temperature reading.
Raffaella De Laurentiis, the executive producer, is the daughter of legendary Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis, who was behind productions like Flash Gordon and Conan the Barbarian. The De Laurentiis family went from epic sword-and-sandal spectacles to a USA Network movie about Tony Danza pretending to be Santa. Film careers contain multitudes.
The most telling detail about the film: the town is named Evergreen, the tree farm is named Evergreen, and the daughter is named Noelle. The movie has no interest in subtlety, and it doesn't need any. It's a Christmas movie about a thief who becomes Santa, and the name of the daughter is Noelle.
Fun Facts
The film premiered on USA Network on November 30, 2003, executive produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis, daughter of the legendary Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis.
The entire film was shot in Vancouver, B.C., which stood in for the fictional American small town of Evergreen. Vancouver is one of the most frequently used production stand-ins for American settings in North American television.
Betty White was 81 years old when Stealing Christmas aired, already a television institution with decades of credits behind her. She would continue acting for nearly another two decades after this film.
Angela Goethals, who plays Sarah's daughter Noelle, was previously known for playing Kevin's older sister Kate in Home Alone (1990), making this her second notable Christmas movie role.
Tony Danza's career before this film included the long-running sitcom Who's the Boss?, which aired from 1984 to 1992. In that show, he played a housekeeper who moved in with a single mother. In Stealing Christmas, he plays a criminal who moves in with a single mother. The casting echoes were not subtle.
Jack's alias in the film is Oscar Burton, a detail that matters later in the story when his identity is at risk of being uncovered by the locals who have come to trust him as their Santa.
The film's IMDB score of 5.8 places it in the company of dozens of USA Network holiday movies from the early 2000s, a period when cable networks were actively building libraries of original Christmas content to compete with the broadcast networks during the holiday season.
Cast
