Fatman

A film with a premise as weird as Fatman’s would seemingly be a hell of a lot stranger than the oddly safe feature before us.

But under the direction of brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms (Small Town Crime), the intriguing pairing of Mel Gibson as a struggling Santa Claus, forced to use his elves and workshop for a U.S. military contract, and Walton Goggins as an assassin hired by coal-receiving tween Billy Wenan (Chance Hurstfield, Good Boys) to kill St. Nick is a tonal mess and misses practically every target the filmmakers set up.

Such would-be gritty, pulpy material is questionably paired with clean, straightforward cinematography, and the friction remains steady through a poorly developed script that leaves gaping plot holes and consistently fails to land its many jokes.

A deadpan exchange between head military officer Capt. Jacobs (veteran TV actor Robert Bockstael) and lead elf 7 (Eric Woolfe, It Chapter Two) about a diet rich in sugar and carbs increasing productivity is as close as the film gets to a fully realized, tonally sharp scene, but bits about Goggins’ character being a hamster owner and all of Billy’s spoiled brat antics fall painfully flat.

Despite conjuring occasional wonder via Santa’s magical abilities, no-nonsense charm from his scene-stealing wife Ruth (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, In Fabric), and fleeting heartfelt moments regarding Christmas gifts helping children realize their potential as adults, the half-assed writing and mishmash of genres renders Fatman into a chunk of cinematic coal.

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Available on Blu-ray and to rent via Amazon Video, iTunes, and other streaming services

(Photo: Paramount Pictures)