{"id":7549,"date":"2024-10-27T14:14:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7549"},"modified":"2024-10-27T14:14:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T18:14:34","slug":"santa-with-muscles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/27\/santa-with-muscles\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa with Muscles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Santa with Muscles <\/strong>(1996)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Legacy Releasing Corporation\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (brief mild language, comic book style action violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Murlowski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jonathan Bond, Fred Mata and Dorrie Krum Raymond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Melody Clark-Curzon and James Covell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Gfelner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 8, 1996 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Hulk Hogan, Don Stark, Robin Curtis, Garrett Morris, Aria Curzon, Adam Wylie, Mila Kunis, Ed Begley Jr., Steve Valentine, Clint Howard, Kai Ephron, Diane Robin, Kevin West, William Newman, Robert Apisa, Pierre Dulat, Brenda Song.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $220,599 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Rule of thumb, any movie starring professional wrestler Hulk Hogan will be an automatic stinker. Anybody who has ever suffered the indignity of sitting through Mr. Nanny knows exactly what I\u2019m talking about. To be fair, I did like Suburban Commando; it makes for decent guilty pleasure viewing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was hoping for the same when I sat down to watch Santa with Muscles<\/strong>, a movie that looks and sounds bad on every conceivable level. I guess I should feel lucky then that it wasn\u2019t as bad as it could have been. Shockingly, it\u2019s actually pretty good in a dumb sort of way. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of those movies that used to open exclusively as family matinees back in the 70s and 80s, silly movies like Earthbound and Zebra in the Kitchen that no self-respecting adult would pay full ticket price to see at night.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Santa with Muscles<\/strong> was obviously made with undiscriminating grade school audiences in mind. I can\u2019t see where this would possibly appeal to anybody over the age of 11 or with an IQ exceeding double digits. It has to be one of the stupidest movies I\u2019ve ever seen with a villain who wouldn\u2019t last a minute against any given comic book superhero, yet I find that I can\u2019t completely dismiss it as an all-out stinker. Blame it on the generosity that comes with the Christmas season.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hogan plays self-made bodybuilding supplement millionaire Blake Thorne who cares only about himself and his own needs. In true Scrooge fashion, he isn\u2019t very nice to his household staff. He forces them to take part in daily combat exercises in which he painfully beats them down. One day while driving recklessly to a paintball game, a bumbling policeman (Howard, Ron\u2019s little brother) chases him right into the local shopping mall where, through a series of ridiculous circumstances, he\u2019s mistaken for the mall Santa.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Thanks to a case of amnesia after being hit on the head with a big plastic Santa, Thorne can\u2019t remember who he is or anything about his life. It doesn\u2019t help that a dishonest store elf named Lenny (Stark, That 70s Show) lifted his wallet while he was unconscious. Santa Blake immediately makes a name for himself when he soundly thrashes two punks who were trying to steal money intended to help save a local orphanage known as \u201cthe Children\u2019s Mission\u201d from the evil Abner Frost (Begley, Private Lessons), a rich germophobic scientist who\u2019s buying up all the property in the area.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Believing he really is Santa Claus, Blake decides to use his extraordinary physical strength to save the Mission from Frost and his goofy henchmen. He shows up at the orphanage to find that three children still live there with social worker Leslie (Curtis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) and maintenance guy Clayton (Morris, Saturday Night Live). Naturally, they take Blake (and Lenny) in and the children start to bond with this muscular version of St. Nick, even altering his costume to show off his impressive arms. It should be noted that one of the children, Sarah, is played by Mila Kunis (That 70s Show, Black Swan) in one of her first roles. Eventually, they all discover why Frost wants the property so badly. The reason is so moronic it\u2019s not even worth repeating, but I will remind you that he is a scientist.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It goes without saying that Santa Blake (1) saves the day for all involved and (2) defeats the dastardly villains. It\u2019s a Christmas movie for kids (?!) and a happy ending is inevitable. However, Santa with Muscles<\/strong> tries to be clever and throws in a last minute shocking revelation about Blake\u2019s past. It\u2019s as equally stupid as everything else in the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It would have been one thing if the filmmakers had kept things simple by sticking to the Blake Thorne storyline. You know, a selfish, cold-hearted millionaire finds redemption by helping a trio of cute orphans keep their home during the holiday season. I don\u2019t understand the need for a comic book villain like Abner Frost here. Couldn\u2019t they have just introduced a greedy plot developer who needs a dose of redemption himself? I guess they were trying to appeal to the boys in the audience who like action, but are too young to see any of the movies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I doubt Santa with Muscles<\/strong> will do it for them. It\u2019s too silly to be taken as anything other than a moron movie. Take the henchmen- they are geologist Mr. Flint (West, Bio-Dome), chemist Mr. Vial (Ephron, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th<\/sup>) and electrified Ms. Watt (Robin, RoboCop). Aren\u2019t the names hilarious? \u00a0My sides still hurt from laughing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are no good performances in Santa with Muscles<\/strong>. There are plenty of embarrassing ones. Somehow that feels right for this particular film. Hogan is no actor; we already established that. The kids aren\u2019t especially cute. The youngest one Elizabeth (Curzon) is particularly annoying and grating. There\u2019s a very painful scene where she and Hogan sing a duet of \u201cMy Angel Baby\u201d in a chapel. It\u2019s almost as bad as when he sang a lullaby to the little girl in Mr. Nanny.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can understand why Santa with Muscles<\/strong> didn\u2019t receive a wide release. Who would go to see it? A lot of the \u201ckiddie matinee movies\u201d from back in the day have rightfully fallen into movie oblivion, but thanks to the magic of home video and DVD, I don\u2019t think this one will ever go away. That\u2019s fine with me. I\u2019ve seen worse, much worse. Santa with Muscles <\/strong>is a holiday classic when compared to the miserable Christmas with the Kranks. That one gave me a headache. Hulk\u2019s movie merely made me shake my head in disbelief. It feels like the correct reaction to such utter silliness.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa with Muscles (1996)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Legacy Releasing Corporation\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 97 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (brief mild language, comic book style action violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Murlowski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jonathan Bond, Fred Mata and Dorrie Krum Raymond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Melody Clark-Curzon and James Covell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Gfelner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 8, 1996 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Hulk Hogan, Don Stark, Robin Curtis, Garrett […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures","category-holiday-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Santa-with-Muscles-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7549"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7629,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7549\/revisions\/7629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}