I am Santa Claus (film): It's ok I guess, but gets boring pretty quick

If you are a fan of professional wrestling entertainment you almost certainly know about the legend that is Mick Foley. What you don't know is that he is a big fan of playing Santa Claus and the people that do it all over the USA as a job seasonally. Well it's either that or he is pretending to be enthusiastic about it so that he can cash in some of that ex-wrestler to films money.

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I've read one of Mick's books and he seems like a pretty decent guy so I'll go ahead and give him the benefit of the doubt and presume that he actually does care. He presents us with a number of stories about various people who do Santa impersonations and take the life of playing Santa very seriously. Some of it is quite sad because these people, generally speaking, do not lead very wealthy lives and while they may have weeded out the people that are drunks and get in trouble for this sort of thing, most of the guys they focus on seem like they are really down-to-earth and caring people.

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It's all pretty entertaining for a while I guess but let's be honest here, how interested can I really be in a group of people that get hired for a week a year to sit in a shopping mall and get abused by the folks that come in there for that sort of thing? After about 40 minutes or so I was kind of wanting it to end but as you might expect, it is the obligatory 90 minutes long since this was determined by the film gods so many years ago for some reason.

We go in and out of a bunch of different people's lives who play Santa, and since it is on Netflix there is a very diverse supply of Santas and the various gripes that come from various groups because of this. I was annoyed by this because it is a fictional character that was determined to look a certain way eons ago so those skinny Santas, the ones who are not pale enough, or the ones that wont commit to the traditional white hair and beard that are complaining in the documentary can straight up kiss my ass.

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The more entertaining moments of the entire thing is when Mick gets some of his wrestling friends or other celebrities to do some sort of interview about the topic matter, but maybe that is just the wrestling fan in me that is talking there. Tommy Dreamer, The Blue Meanie, Roddy Piper, Jerry Lawler, and Dee Snider all do some cameos and IMO that is the best part of the film.

The rest of it, unfortunately, it just kind of sad.

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I don't know if this was specifically the angle they were going for with this documentary, but almost all of the Santa impersonators we are introduced to are destitute, living with their kids, seem to suffer from depression, and don't seem to be very happy at all unless it is December.

Maybe the idea was to hopefully have people treat the mall Santas a bit better.

Should I watch it?

If you, like me, were hoping that there was going to be more of a wrestling angle to this because of the fact that Mick Foley is in it, you will be disappointed. Other than a few clips that they show of Mick performing as Mankind at the start, it has almost nothing to do with wrasslin' at all.

It does exactly what it says in the promo: It follows some Santas mostly the rest of the year and takes a peek into their lives. I ended up feeling kind of bad after seeing this and well, that's not really the holiday spirit i was hoping for.

I suppose this is eye-opening, but I think that they intentionally sought out some sob stories of the sake of getting to a desired result. I certainly hope that not all mall Santas are this destitute and depressed.

There are a ton of other Christmas movies to watch and I think that this one can be skipped unless you want to make yourself unnecessarily depressed along with most of the Santas that they feature in this. That being said there are definitely worse things to watch, such as Jingle all the Way.

_{The only legal way to stream this is along with a standard Netflix subscription}