Miracle on 34th Street became a forced holiday classic due to its obsessive airplay in the past twenty years, but it's so empty in content and lifeless in execution that it can merely serve as a background to Christmas dinner.
The story is actually made of some interesting ideas: Santa gets a job in a department store, manages to convince disenchanted children that he actually exists but ends up being under trial. Too bad that they used the corniest and most uninventive pretexts a writer could ever think of to get such a story developed. The ways Santa gets framed and the whole trial unwinds just didn't make any sense. Richard Attenborough's Santa Claus was the only convincing thing here and probably the only reason the kids of the 90s still remember this film.
Even though it's been a few years since we deliberately sat down to watch Miracle on 34th Street, it's still a treat.
We usually go for the original, but for once we thought we'd go for the remake. Even though Mara Wilson is cute as a button, and Richard Attenborough is one of the more believable Santas there has ever been, there's something missing. Some of the magic from the original is gone.
Though...Don't get me wrong. It's still a good movie, but I'd choose the original over this most of the time.
Late great Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park) lights up the screen. In this unnecessary but well made remake.
One of my all time favourite Christmas movies, have to watch it every year!! It has a beautiful message to it and young Mara Wilson really makes the film.
Film 94 (Goal: 300) of 2024
Miracle on 34th Street is a very sweet, yet at times completely unrealistic Christmas film, that captures the essence of Christmas - to put your faith in something and the rewards of that faith. I've never seen the original so I can't comment on comparisons to the original story, or quality in the remake compared to it's predecessor - all I know is that I really enjoyed this. Richard Attenborough is perfectly cast as the film's Santa. Most of the film works because of his charm. There's a host of popular actors from the 90s in here - Mara Wilson, Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott, James Remar, Robert Prosky, Jane Leeves - and while some are wasted, particularly Remar and Leeves, they all do a good job with the time allocated to them.
Miracle on 34th Street may not be the most fondly remembered Christmas film, especially against some of the other holiday releases of that decade. But it's a film I think that still holds up really well. Now whether it holds a candle to the original, that's another question.
If Kevin's family disappeared for Christmas, a new one must have appeared somewhere else, nature strives for balance. ;)
Miracle on 34th Street (1994) is not as good as the 1947 film of the same name, as it does get a bit over the top.
However, its heart is in the right place, and it's a great feel-good movie for the holidays. Richard Attenborough is terrific as Kris Kringle. The scene between him and Mara Wilson was so adorable.
Why do people like christmas movies? ew
One would think that John Hughes would know better than to remake a classic, but he did...so there it is. Hughes’ Miracle on 34th Street is vastly inferior to the original, though it does manage to pull off a little magic. When a Cole’s new department store Santa Claus brings them back from the verge of bankruptcy their rival attempt to discredit him as insane for believing that he really is Santa Claus. The major flaw of the film is that it creates a villain out of the rival department store, which isn’t in keeping with the spirit of the original story. However, the casting is pretty solid for the most part; Elizabeth Perkins and Dylan McDermott do especial well in the lead roles, as does Mara Wilson. As remakes go, Miracle on 34th Street isn't a bad one, but it gets by mostly on reflected glory.
Certainly not as good as the original, but an admirable effort, non-the-less. Mara Wilson's performance is probably what I didn't like. Comparing her to Natalie Wood though is a tough job.
THE WACPINE OF 'MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1994)'
WRITING: 6
ATMOSPHERE: 8
CHARACTERS: 6
PRODUCTION: 6
INTRIGUE: 7
NOVELTY: 4
ENJOYMENT: 6
The Good:
This remake of the Christmas classic stars Richard Attenborough, who makes a fine job playing Kris Kringle, but who also just seems like a bleak copy of the iconic Edmund Gwenn performance. But he has his sweet moments, such as the one with the deaf child.
What this film does better compared to the original is that it builds a warm and close relationship between Susan and her mother. It also develops the relationship between Dorey and Brian better, even if their chemistry isn't as good.
Susan's wish for Christmas feels bigger and even more implausible in the remake, which makes the miracle feel stronger and more, well, miraculous.
There's also a stronger sense of villainy in this film, coming from the fake Santas and the competitors to Cole's while keeping to the idea of Kris Kringle as a crazy, old man. They've also left out the silly psychiatrist's scheme, which is great.
The courtroom sequence has been condensed while keeping the main parts from the original film. It feels swifter this time around, and it's also funnier. Above all, it makes more sense, with more evidence brought forward by both sides.
J.T. Walsh is great in the courtroom scenes.
The ultimate miracle feels strongly emotional, unlike the slightly more whimsical one in the original.
The Bad:
Mara Wilson is annoying and lacks the adorable charm from Natalie Wood in the original.
The acting is mostly atrocious. Elizabeth Perkins and Dylan McDermott are stiff, lack any onscreen chemistry and remain far from the warmth and energy emitted by Payne and O'Hara in the original.
Combining several key scenes from the original film with an updated script and added depth, this remake feels bleak and lifeless most of the time, and the Christmas spirit is significantly weaker than in the original.
The Ugly:
The Dutch kid from 1947 version has been replaced by a deaf kid. What does that tell us about the evolution of our society?
CAWPINE RATING: 6.14 / 10 = 3 stars
Richard Attenborough is a good Santa Claus but this is too long and brings nothing or special to the story. I'm sticking to the original.
This is 90s New York. If I ever go to NY at Christmas time - THIS is what I want to see. That house. The 90s winter/Christmas clothes. Ah, I want to live in this world. And what would a Christmas movie be without jazz and swing Christmas music while your characters walk around a department store?
Oh, the humble Christmas film. There's always a pretty simple beat that it follows. But isn't that the point? Isn't that why they work and what they're for this time of year? The idea of debating the existence of Santa Claus is an engaging one. I've said once before that it elevates the film beyond a feel-good holiday movie and engages on a philosophical level, allowing us to delve into our own experiences of Christmas and what the Santa Claus figure means to us. I even found myself questioning how I'd handle the subject with my future kids.
McDermott is charming, Wilson plays Susan as a mystifying and refreshing young girl, and Perkins is an emotionally hardened and complicated Mrs. Walker who provides some character development. Attenborough is the literal star of the show as someone who I truly believe actually was the real Santa Claus and that's where he is now.
I was surprised that this film clocked in at nearly 2 hours as there's not much action or hijinks driving the plot forward. So it's pleasantly surprising that the story doesn't weigh heavy and in fact builds welcomely, as we join the characters on their introspection of the idea of Kris Kringle being the real Santa, arriving at the finale where you wonder why you ever doubted that it wasn't true.
Aside from the slightly off-putting focus on a commercial department store being the platform for the ideals of a family holiday which shouldn't really be about monetisation (although, I should that there are instances such as Kringle sending parents to the best place to buy the toys, which do attempt to counter-balance this), the film works so well as a sentimental and classic Christmas film and has John Hughes undeniably all over it!
A powerful, magical, and touching Christmas Movie which makes it into my favourite Christmas-Theme movies of all time.
This is a remake of the 1947 version.
The cast is great and the plot captures the heart of what makes Christmas such a special season.
There are several heart-warming scenes and some powerful quotes such as:
"If you can't believe, if you can't accept anything on faith, then you're doomed for a life dominated by doubt."
I have not seen the 1947 version, but many critics are claiming that it was perfect and this remake managed to capture a portion of the magic from the previous movie. I have yet to judge this.
The movie is recommended for all the family of all ages.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-11-28T03:43:30Z
6.7/10. There’s an old adage from Roger Ebert, the patron saint of film critics, that goes “'It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.” There’s wisdom in that, with the idea that even movies that express laudable ideas can do so in a hamfisted or haphazard way, and even ones that does the same for less admirable notions can do so a virtuoso or interesting fashion. A Miracle on 34th Street is decidedly the latter, a film that goes to bat for an argument I disagree with, but which does so in a way that makes me nevertheless compelled by the story it tells.
Because Miracle on 34th Street is, sometimes subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly, a film that makes the argument that the American way of life and the people who pursue it have gone astray and are misguided, in their goals and in their culture, through the decreased role religion has played in the public and private lives of its citizens. At times, the film engages with this idea in subtle ways: Kris Kringle expecting to be sworn in using a bible, Mr. Bedford wanting to say a prayer, the romantic finale (itself the product of Kringle’s scheme) taking place in an ornate cathedral. At others, it’s much more direct.
That’s particularly true in the film’s climax, where the judge deciding whether the purported Santa Clause should be committed or not makes a direct comparison between the idea of Santa Clause and the idea of God. It’s then that the film puts its cards on the table – for the purposes of Miracle, Santa is God, not in the sense that he is some divine creator, but that this jovial, benevolent figure who becomes the film’s St. Nikolas, but in the way he is treated skeptically, the way that wounded adults teach their children not to believe him, the way cynical and malevolent forces want to drive him out so that they can do their evil deeds without his interfering do-goodery, that suggest our country and its people are on the wrong track, are empty and incomplete, to the extent religion is treated in the same fashion.
It’s a film that’s peculiarly (lowercase-c) conservative in its views for something that came out of the devil’s den of Hollywood. It subtly posits that a child’s life is out of step if they’re not part of a nuclear family with real house away from the harsh environs of the godless big cities. It suggests that the people who have turned away from faith are either downright evil or are secretly unhappy and lying to themselves about it being for the best. It offers not even the hint of a downside or drawback or measure of complexity to the blind trust it argues for.
As someone who grew up outside the mainstream religion in the United States, that’s a tough pill to swallow. The arguments for and against Santa’s existence in the film are facile and full of easily toppled (if narratively useful) strawmen. There’s a WASP-y orthodoxy, a sense of a desired return to the “good old days” at play that glosses over the problems with that idea. The heart of the film, its point and posited suggestion for what’s best for people and this country as a whole feels antiquated and even myopic, in a way that makes the subtext of so many scenes difficult to contend with.
And yet, taken solely as text, Miracle succeeds in telling an unexpectedly convincing story of a wonderfully endearing old man who brings joy to everything he touches and inspires a city, and a nascent family, to something better.
The film’s greatest boon is its casting of Richard Attenborough as its Kris Kringle. Attenborough just exudes a sense of mirth and quiet dignity, bringing gravitas and joy to a role that needed both in great measure. For a film like this to work, on any terms, it needed to make its Santa one that the audience, not just its characters, could believe in at a visceral level, and Attenborough delivers that nigh-perfectly.
But his success also speaks to how the character is written and how the truth of his identity is presented. The easy thing to do, when attempting to show that someone really could be this jovial elf of myth, would be to show him doing something magical, even ambiguously magical (a trick which the film saves for its ending). Instead, the film sells its Santa by demonstrating the pride he takes in who he is, the omnibenevolent bent with which he approaches everything, the utter commitment and care he has for his cause.
That comes through in the stellar, loving sequence where Kringle puts on his Santa suit – with great care and precision – and gazes around at the department store display before him. The sheer euphoria, the pleasure he takes in his mission to spread joy to the world, is palpable and infectious. And by the same token, the stark pale light he inhabits when committed to a mental institution, sitting lonely at the end of his bed staring out the window, is a powerful image of how devastating it is for him to have that ideal taken away and sullied. In one visual, it communicates his abject shame at thinking he’s marred the symbolism of Santa Claus for children all over the world.
But it’s the interactions with children that truly sell Attenborough’s Santa. That comes through in his conversations with Susan Walker (Mara Wilson), an impossibly precocious child who’s been taught by her mother not to believe in such myths. Wilson is superb, particularly given her age, communicating the emotions a child who is unusually resigned to the ways of the world while still trying to find the excitement in them, who gradually looks at the evidence of this man’s very existence and starts to believe something more is possible. A skeptical child becomes the fulcrum through which this Kris Kringle is established as more than just the average department store Santa, and the pair’s conversations -- the cautious optimism on one side and the tender acceptance on the other -- makes it work.
And yet the most magical moment for Miracle’s Santa comes in a scene that involve nothing supernatural at all. In what doubles as the film’s most heartwarming moment, a mother brings her deaf child to sit on Santa’s lap and tells him that he doesn’t need to speak to her; she just wanted to see him. It’s then that Kringle reveals he knows sign language, a demonstration which clearly delights the little girl on his knee, and starts to convince little Susan that his Santa is more than meets the eye. There is nothing overtly magical about it, but there’s a sense of preternatural goodness, an altruism and devotion to making
these kids happy that marks him as not of this world.
Unfortunately, even setting aside the thematic issues, the film squanders much of this good will focusing on a dull romance between Susan’s mother (Elizabeth Perkins) and their neighbor Mr. Bedford (Dylan McDermott). Their romance takes up a great deal of oxygen in the film, but we’re never really told through exposition, let alone shown in any convincing way, why they like each other. Instead, Mr. Bedford is simply smitten by fiat, and Ms. Walker is less a character than a means to tell a story of Hallmark-level triteness about a woman who believed in love once, was badly burned by it, and now refuses to trust in anyone or anything after until her mind is predictably changed by the new sprite-in-residence. The whole romantic element feels needlessly tacked on to a film at its best when it eschews such perfunctory movie fill-ins.
The same goes for the cadre of overtly evil characters who set out to ruin Santa Claus for pure financial reasons (when they’re not doing it just for the sake of evil itself). There is, at times, an unshowy complexity to Miracle, that delves into why we believe what we do and which makes a surprisingly convincing case for its Kris Kringle.
But when it focuses on these destructive forces – the malevolent rival department store CEO, his duo of goons, the coarse Santa impostor, and the mercenary lawyer who tries to lean on the judge with promises of reelection campaign donations – that message is dumbed down to a cartoonish extent. There’s already reasons for the viewer to have qualms about the arguments the film is quietly (and occasionally not so quietly) making, but the mustache-twirling tones in which any and all opposition are presented also cheapens the message the movie seems to want to send.
Perhaps, however, there is a save. Despite the clear implications behind the manner in which this film tells it story, Miracle can be expressed more broadly as an endorsement of the idea of faith, in all its forms. That certainly includes a belief in God, one endorsed by Mr. Bedford’s saving throw at the trial, but also things like the belief in the possibility of love, in other people, in things we do not necessarily understand but nevertheless experience. Stripped of the subtext behind its message, the film can be said to simply stand for a much more neutral principle of the benefits of taking chances on things we want to believe in, even if we risk hurt and hardship in the process.
And if we twist the film’s themes a bit, if we break them down to a few basic ideas they can become something that resonates apart from a somewhat stunted and oversimplified view it espouses. Kris Kringle is right when he says that he is a symbol, that apart from his existence or nonexistence, there is an idea about mankind’s ability to overcome our lesser angels and be our best selves, for our own good, the good of the people we love, and perhaps even the good of the world, that has merit, especially in a holiday season that touches people in this country regardless of the conception of their beliefs.
Despite my reluctance at the idea that religion should be a greater part of public life, I firmly believe that it can be a force for good, that there are innumerable people prompted by their faith to be better and to do wonderful things for others. And more than that, I believe that there are a number of individuals, each of them mere mortals, who have created incredible changes for the benefit of us all, who have changed the world and dedicated their lives to causes that are tremendously admirable and grand. And these people, whatever their religious persuasion, believed, in the face of the horrible tragedies and crimes across human history, that we are a people worth saving, that human beings, whatever their natures, can come together to achieve amazing things and to be as great as we hope to be.
That is, however much or little religion is involved, a vital form of faith. And there are people – whether they be mythical like Kris Kringle or flesh and blood like the film’s producer and co-writer John Hughes -- who give us symbols and touchstones to help remind us of that. They help to rouse that belief, the trust and the hope that we can care for one another, on holidays and everydays. And that, in its own way, is a miracle.