Santa with Muscles but No Brains

So it’s not exactly a secret that we’re not the biggest Hulk Hogan fans around here. However, I suspect even people who liked him a far sight more than we do would be forced to admit that he was not a good actor outside the ring. Probably not all that hot inside it. Now, once again, we have a script that no one could have elevated; there are multiple people in this that I’ve seen be better, often much better, in other things, and they’re stuck with what they’ve got. But the review that said this made Schwarzenegger look like Olivier was not wrong. Not that Schwarzenegger was making crap like this even in those days; his crap was bigger budget, if nothing else.

Through pointless shenanigans, bodybuilding millionaire Blake Thorn gets amnesia. He’s in a mall where the Santa hasn’t showed up, and to get a bonus, elf Lenny (Don Stark) persuades him he’s really Santa and sends him out to greet the kiddies. They then for reasons end up at an orphanage that’s being shut down by Ebner Frost (Ed Begley Jr.). Elizabeth (Aria Noelle Curzon) wrote to Santa for help, like you do, and believes Blake is there in response to her letter. Frost’s evil henchmen are threatening the three kids and two adults there, and it later turns out that Frost has basically bought out the town because of the piezoelectric crystals under the town that will make him a fortune.

Now, let’s be clear; piezoelectricity is a thing that absolutely exists and is one hundred percent not this. These are shiny, light-up magic crystals that explode if you drop them because they’re full of electricity. What kind of preschool understanding of electricity do you have to have to think that makes sense? Oh, and then toward the end Blake and Frost—who of course turn out to have both grown up in the orphanage and just not remembered it until it’s plot relevant—are literally dueling with them, whamming them against one another. But earlier, everyone had to watch where they stepped in the cave full of the crystals just in case.

They really go out of their way to make Frost cartoonishly bad. Not only is he a lunatic germophobe who’s wandering around in a high-tech hazmat suit, he hires actual literal cartoon supervillain henchmen. There’s Dr. Flint (Kevin West), a mad geologist. Dr. Vial (Kai Ephron), a mad chemist who sprays methane at people. Dr. Watt (Diane Robin), a mad . . . electrician? I guess? Anyway, she’s got gloves that literally let her electrocute people. There are villains from the Adam West Batman that would be ashamed to be seen with these people. Oh, and in case you missed it with that and the shutting down an orphanage, he decides he’ll keep the kids around. To do the mining.

One of those kids is played by Adam Wylie, who played moppets in this sort of movie frequently—including, in fact, Kindergarten Cop six years earlier. But Sarah is Mila Kunis in her first if-barely-theatrical-release movie. Leslie is Robin Curtis, best known as the not-Kirstie Alley Saavik, and Clayton is Garrett Morris. One of the cops is Clint Howard. Frost’s lead assistant, Dr. Blight, is poor Steve Valentine five years before he would be Nigel on Crossing Jordan. So much of this cast could demonstrably do better than watch Hulk Hogan pretend he isn’t exactly the guy he’s playing at the beginning of the movie, before his face turn.