Add to that the fact that his job is rather demanding, and even when he does get to see his son, such as on Christmas Eve, he’s usually running late, and his son doesn’t always want to see him, so things just aren’t going very well. All that is about to change.

To his credit, Scott finds that the turkey will take four hours to cook, but he tries it anyway – this despite the fact that he comes home after dark, which means it’s got to be pretty late when he starts cooking the bird. Perhaps this explains why he might turn up the heat to get it to cook faster, and why the flames are coming from the oven, and why they end up heading to Denny’s for Christmas Dinner. Needless to say, Scott’s son isn’t year happy with the way things are going.

But later that night, as Scott finally gets Charlie to go to sleep, they hear a clatter on the roof, and Scott heads outside just in time to find someone up there. As luck would have it, Scott startles him and the guy falls all the way from the roof and into the snowbank. It’s Santa! While Charlie is excited to see Santa, he rapidly decides that he’s not happy that his dad killed Santa. But when they find a ladder in the yard (from the Rose Suchak ladder company – say it out loud), Charlie heads to the roof to find the reindeer waiting, and Scott has no choice but to follow. Before long, Scott is donning Santa’s suit and delivering the rest of the presents in the houses of strangers.

When Scott tells the reindeer to head home, they don’t go back to the house, but instead they end up at the North Pole, in Santa’s workshop, and it seems that Scott Calvin has fallen prey to the Santa Clause – a clause on the card that say by donning the suit of Santa Claus (no “e”) and getting into the sleigh, he has become the new Santa. This does not make Scott happy, by Charlie is ecstatic.

The next morning, Charlie is ready to tell everyone that his dad is Santa Claus and they went to the North Pole – this means his mom isn’t happy. Even Scott isn’t happy, because he has less than a year to get his affairs in order and return to the North Pole to take over his new position. As that date nears, his body starts to change. He gains weight, he likes to eat only sweets and his hair turns gray. He can’t even keep a clean face, as when he shaves his beard grows back immediately.

Perhaps the worst part about it is that Charlie’s mom decides that Scott, in changing his physical appearance, is trying to win back Charlie, and she takes away his visitation privileges entirely. Scott has reached a new low, and he doesn’t even want to be Santa.

Finally, when Thanksgiving rolls around, he goes to visit Charlie, and that’s when Charlie gives him the greatest gift of all – he says that he believes in him as Santa, and in an odd turn (because it seems to be supporting kidnapping), Scott takes Charlie to the North Pole to help prepare for Christmas. Charlie’s mom, needless to say, is in a bit of a panic. Naturally everything turns out, and while I can understand what they were going for, that was just an odd move to make.

Still, it’s an enjoyable movie, and one that can be a regular part of the holiday season.

Rated PG, mostly for some suggestive material.

The only potential problem is that if one of you has a mother who doesn’t like KISS, and thinks that the band is nothing more than an acronym for “Knights in Satans Service”, then sets fire to your tickets before sending you off to boarding school the very day of the concert, you may have a tough time getting to the show.

In that case, you may have to steal a car and win four tickets on a radio call-in show during study hall. Then you’re in. So once you get the car and break your unlucky friend out of his new school using some psychedelic pizza, you hit the road for your ultimate destination – Detroit, in order to pick up your tickets.

After a brush with some disco dancers along the highway, you make it there and find out… you don’t have tickets after all. The moron in the band who was responsible for winning (which he actually did just fine) forgot to give his name before he hung up the phone, so the station had to give the tickets to the next caller. So the quartet splits up to see if they can score tickets.

Lex (Giuseppe Andrews) tries to break into the concert, and is doing well until he gets spotted by security, at which point he starts running and causes all sorts of damage to the place, and eventually gets tossed.

Trip (James DeBello), the moron in question, decides to beat up a little kid and steal his ticket, picks on the wrong kid and ends up getting beat up himself by the kid’s older brother and his friends.

Hawk (Edward Furlong) tries a scalper, but comes up short, so he joins an amateur strip show, where he hopes to win $100 to buy the ticket. He doesn’t win, but he does meet up with Ron Jeremy, who is the MC of the show, and Shannon Tweed, who pays him for his “services” after the show. Unfortunately the scalper has already sold the ticket by the time he gets done.

Jam (Sam Huntington) starts to look for his ticket and finds his mom – the one who burnt the original tickets – is leading a rally against KISS and she spots him and takes him to confession before he can get away. There he meets up with Beth (Melanie Lynskey of Two and a Half Men), and he loses his virginity to her in the confessional. Guess that plan backfired.

The guys meet up again later, find out that they still have no tickets and decide to beat each other up and try to get the box office to give them replacements. They are just about to be turned away when Trip spots the kid and the older brother who beat him up (and took his wallet) so he identifies them as the assailants, and since they have his wallet, the guys get their tickets, and they get tossed. Probably not a very good moral, and not the best plan, but they do get to see the show.

Rated R for strong language, drug use and sex-related content.