The Worse the Movie - The Longer the Review
a review of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians by Keith on June 28, 2006

When a movie's tagline is:

SEE: The Martians Kidnap Santa! Santa's North Pole Workshop! The Fantastic Martian Toy Factory! Earth Kids Meeting with Martian Kids! Space-ship Journey from Earth to Mars! Santa Turn Mars-Robot Into a Mechanical Toy!

you know you're in for some fun.

A friend asked me a few weeks ago if I watched any movies that weekend. She obviously doesn't know me very well because I had watched 9 movies that weekend. She asked about them, particularly one she had never heard of. What should have been a simple description turned into the email below. Why is it that bad movies end up taking so much time to explain? Do we feel a need to justify what we watched by over-analyzing everything? There must be some equation relating movie badness and lengths of reviews... I'm just too tired to work it out.
Notice how I didn't even feel the need to google the names of the characters like I did for Poseidon

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Basically, the main Martians' two kids are all mopey and depressed, but they watch a lot of Earth programs and see Santa and show some interest in him. Main Martian sees this and gets a dozen friends to fly to Earth to kidnap Santa and take him back to make Martian kids happy. When they first get to Earth, there are Santas all over the place, on corners ringing bells, in shopping malls, EVERYwhere. They pick up a pair of Earthling siblings who explain the real Santa is at the North Pole and the Martians proceed to kidnap him. There's a baddie who hates the kids and Santa and on the trip back to Mars he tries to blow them out the air lock (don't worry they escape!) Now Santa and the two kids get back to Mars, the baddie escapes to a secret cave somewhere, but the Martians have built a big machine that makes all the toys so Santa can deliver to Mars kids to make them happy. Santa's not used to not making them by hand, but he likes how quickly it all gets done. The Mars kids are getting happy but the Earth kids are acting mopey (how ironic!) Main Martian's wife makes Santa a 2nd suit (apparantly they don't do laundry on Mars--no water I guess) and for some reason an extra beard (plot device for later). During the night, baddie and his two pals come back to screw up the machine so Mars Christmas is ruined, and when they get there they spot some Dopey-like martian who was playing dress-up with the 2nd suit and beard (we're lucky she made one!) and they kidnap him, thinking he's the REAL Santa, taking him back to their secret cave with a nuclear fence. Next morning, they can't find Dopey, but don't look too hard for him, cause there are toys to be made!! But the machine starts mixing up the toys (bear's head on a doll and doll's head on a bear, etc.) Santa regrets not having a large labor force to make the toys by hand, but they try to fix the machine. Meanwhile, baddie Martian thinks he has the upper hand since he has "Santa" locked away so he goes to talk to main Martian to convince him to give up on this Christmas idea. When he gets back, there's a big toy fight where all the kids and Santa and main Martian use water guns, dart guns, baseball bats, toy cars, etc to beat up on baddie Martian. Eventually everything gets fixed, Dopey Martian escapes through the nuclear curtain protecting the cave by switching two light bulbs, and Santa and the kids go back to Earth, everyone (save baddie Martian) very happy.

C Surprisingly good for one of imdb.com's Bottom 100 for now