Director Jason Winer gets the series off to a fun start, bringing Allen back to his old ways. But he also finds a way to make the former Scott Calvin look a little hip. (A Santa with abs? It’s possible.) He also fleshes out the workshop and finds enough ways to lampoon tradition without appearing ungrateful. ... The latest iteration may not be as snarky as earlier ones, but there's plenty of fun to ensure this isn't going to be a "lump of coal" year.

The Santa Clauses doesn’t bother trying to reinvent the sleigh, but it does splash a new coat of paint on it, in mostly agreeable and mildly clever ways.

Though it’s thin in characterization and obvious in the emotional beats — sort of the point in a work like this, anyway — it’s a respectable, fairly amusing holiday entertainment for anyone who would like to start their Christmas now.

This is a SKIP IT to all but the diehard Santa Clause fans out there. If you rewatch the entire Santa Clause trilogy every year, of course you’re going to want to see what happens next. The rest of us are fine sticking to the first film — or just rewatching Elf.

Gleams of genuine emotion or charm tend to get buried under shoddy workmanship. ... The undemanding plot and shiny visuals might be enough to quiet a room full of kids for a half-hour at a time, and possibly even elicit a twinge of nostalgia or two in their Millennial parents. But if The Santa Clause‘s central worry is that there’s just not enough holiday magic in the world anymore, this halfhearted series seems unlikely to be the gift that’s going to bring it back.

It works so desperately hard to fill out six episodes — a full three hours of Clause #content! — that it just ends up dragging its feet. Scenes that should be a snappy couple of minutes go on for several too long; plots that can barely stand on their own do their best to hold up entire episodes to no avail. Trying to watch more than one episode, let alone six, feels less like having a warm mug of cocoa than chugging it and crashing off the sugar high.