Santa's in town early this year.
The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Siblings Kate and Teddy try to prove Santa Claus is real, but when they accidentally cause his sleigh to crash, they have to save Christmas.
rating 7/10 User rating 2,357 votes 72% ❄ Christmas Connection
A brother and sister stow away in Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve, accidentally causing a crash that scatters his reindeer and threatens to derail the holiday. The entire film takes place on Christmas Eve and revolves around saving Christmas itself.
Where to Watch
Our Review
Netflix dropped The Christmas Chronicles in November 2018, and within a week it had been streamed by over 20 million households. That is a staggering number for a holiday film that had almost no theatrical buzz. The reason was simple: Kurt Russell plays Santa Claus, and he plays him like no one else has before.
Kurt Russell as Santa Claus in The Christmas Chronicles
Forget the jolly, rotund caricature. Russell's Santa is lean, leather-jacketed, and vaguely rock 'n' roll. He's irritable when things go sideways. He flirts with Mrs. Claus over the phone. He carries himself like a man who has been doing this job for centuries and doesn't need a couple of kids slowing him down.
Russell reportedly based his version of Santa on his own personality, which tracks. There's a looseness to the performance that feels improvised even when it isn't. The jailhouse musical number, where Santa picks up an electric guitar and leads inmates through a rendition of "Santa Claus Is Back in Town," is either the best or the most absurd scene in any Christmas movie of the last decade. Possibly both.
The film was directed by Clay Kaytis, a former Disney animator making his live-action debut. His visual instincts show. The North Pole sequence in the final act has a warmth and scale that most straight-to-streaming holiday films never attempt.
The Christmas Chronicles Cast and Story
The plot follows siblings Teddy and Kate Pierce, played by Judah Lewis and Darby Camp. They are grieving the recent death of their firefighter father and coping in opposite ways. Teddy is angry and drifting toward petty crime. Kate is clinging to Christmas traditions, rewatching old family videos obsessively.
Kate spots something unusual in old footage and becomes convinced Santa is real. She drags Teddy into a plan to film Santa on Christmas Eve, they sneak into the sleigh, and everything goes wrong from there. The bag of presents is lost. The reindeer scatter across Chicago. The hat, which apparently powers the whole operation, goes missing.
It's a chase movie dressed in Christmas wrapping. The kids and Santa bicker their way through the night, trying to recover everything before midnight. The pacing works because the film doesn't linger. At 104 minutes, it moves briskly enough that the weaker CGI moments pass before you dwell on them.
Those Elves, Though
The elves are a problem. There is no polite way to say it. They look like someone fed a Furby through a microwave, and they behave like gremlins on a sugar high. Their big scene involves trashing a car, and it plays less like comic relief and more like a test of your patience.
This is the film's one real misfire. Everything else commits to a grounded, character-driven approach, and then these rubbery CGI creatures show up and break the spell. Kids seem to love them. Adults will want to fast-forward.
Why The Christmas Chronicles Works on Netflix
The film's success makes more sense when you consider what it replaced. Before Netflix started producing original holiday content, December streaming options were thin. You had the same rotation of broadcast TV specials and whatever Hallmark was doing. The Christmas Chronicles arrived with genuine movie stars, a real budget, and enough edge to feel different from the pack.
Russell and his real-life partner Goldie Hawn, who cameos as Mrs. Claus in the final scene, brought actual star power. The sequel, The Christmas Chronicles 2, arrived in 2020 and expanded the mythology to include an ancient elf village and a villain played by Julian Dennison. It's bigger but less focused, the kind of follow-up that mistakes scale for soul.
The original remains the better film. Its secret weapon is restraint. The emotional core, two kids working through grief on the night they need Christmas most, gives the set pieces something to anchor against. When Teddy finally lets his guard down, it lands because the film earned it through 90 minutes of resistance.
The Christmas Chronicles Rating and Verdict
This is a 7 out of 10 Christmas movie. It doesn't reach the heights of the true classics, but it doesn't need to. Russell's Santa alone justifies the watch. He brings a swagger to the role that feels genuinely fresh, and the film is smart enough to build around his energy rather than burying it under plot.
The grief storyline gives it unexpected weight. The Chicago setting provides a grittier backdrop than the usual snowy small-town fantasy. And that jailhouse musical number will either make you a believer or confirm your suspicions that Netflix will greenlight anything. For most families, it's become as much a part of the December playlist as the old standbys. Russell reportedly refused to cut his Santa beard for months after filming wrapped, telling interviewers he didn't want to disappoint any kids who recognized him in public.
Fun Facts
Kurt Russell spent months growing his own beard for the role and refused to shave it for weeks after filming ended, telling talk show hosts he wanted to stay in character for any children he encountered.
The jailhouse musical scene features Russell actually playing the guitar. He learned several songs for the role and performed "Santa Claus Is Back in Town," originally recorded by Elvis Presley in 1957.
Goldie Hawn's cameo as Mrs. Claus at the end was kept secret until the film premiered. Her scene lasts under a minute but led directly to her expanded role in The Christmas Chronicles 2.
Netflix reported that 20 million accounts streamed the film in its first week of release in November 2018, making it one of the platform's biggest original film debuts at the time.
Director Clay Kaytis previously worked as an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, where his credits included Frozen and Tangled.
The film's production design team built a full-scale sleigh that was mounted on a gimbal rig, allowing the actors to perform their scenes with realistic movement rather than relying entirely on green screen.
Darby Camp, who plays Kate Pierce, was 10 years old during filming. She went on to star in Clifford the Big Red Dog in 2021, playing another kid who bonds with a larger-than-life character.
Cast
