Klaus for concern
Netflix’s first animated film looks good, but lacks substance to be a holiday classic
LOS ANGELES Have you ever wondered how it all began, the arrangement by which a jolly old toymaker based somewhere near the North Pole makes the rounds each Christmas to bring presents to all the good little boys and girls?
Turns out the instant you start to peer into Santa’s origin story, the whole thing begins to unravel — at least, that’s what happens when Sergio Pablos tries to reverse-engineer the meaning of Christmas with Klaus, by focusing on a scheme to save snail mail.
Klaus is on Netflix, which commissioned the feature-length cartoon from Pablos (perhaps best known as the mind behind Illumination’s Despicable Me) and his Spain-based animation studio. It’s Netflix’s first original animated feature — and not just a low-budget computer-rendered quickie, but a stylish return to hand-drawn animation with a look all its own.
But Klaus isn’t an instant Christmas classic.
It’s more of a serviceable Christmas-themed distraction. Klaus isn’t even the main character of Klaus.
That would be a feckless brat named Jesper, the hard-to-like son of the Rockefeller-like titan behind the international postal service, or some such. The espresso-sipping, work-shirking kid (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) needs to be taught a lesson. Ergo, Dad gives Jesper a one-way ticket to a post office in remote Smeerenburg, where the slacker is expected to convince the locals to send thousands of letters, or else he might as well stay gone.
As designed by Torsten Schrank, Jesper’s an appealing-looking character: scarecrow thin, with long, gangly arms and legs, googly eyes and a goofy grin. His bulbous pink nose looks like it would make a honking sound when pinched, and his awkward ears stick out from either side of his narrow head. Another voice would have likely changed his personality for the better, although it’s the writing that’s really at fault here.
Collaborating with Pablos, unproven duo Zach Lewis and Jim Mahoney have cooked up the equivalent of a con-man movie, in which Jesper invents an elaborate holiday tradition as an excuse to go home, only to learn that he likes it in Smeerenburg after all.
Compared with Klaus, who becomes the unwitting patsy in his plan, Jesper is a spindly toothpick of a guy, whereas the bearded fella looks like some kind of colossus with a deep-bass voice to match (a wonderful use of J.K. Simmons). Klaus isn’t nearly as friendly as legend has it. He’s actually more of a hermit, a former woodsman sealed away in his cabin at the top of the mountain. Through a twist never properly explained, Jesper discovers that if he can convince the kids to write letters to Klaus, the old loner will reward them with toys, and thus Jesper can hit his postal quota.
This is where all the revisionist Christmas mythology comes in. He enlists the not-quite-organic involvement of several supporting characters, including local teacher Alva (Rashida Jones).
Turns out Smeerenburg is the feuding capital of the world, where the adults wage daily battles with one another (Joan Cusack and Will Sasso play the bitter heads of rival clans) and raise their kids to be spiteful, unhappy haters.
Jesper has his work cut out for him: For his new mail system to work, he must first teach the youngsters to have fun, and he invents additional conditions as his gift plan gathers steam — like the whole naughty-versus-nice thing.
Frankly, it all seems much too complicated for what it is. And instead of making audiences love Christmas more, it raises the rather unfortunate question of why we believed it in the first place.