As I approach reviewing the 1994 remake of the 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street I wrestle with wanting to keep my thoughts and comments strictly to the text at hand. But I can’t help but reflect back to the superior and more magical original. While Les Mayfield’s version of the Christmas spirit on trial as written by John Hughes isn’t awful, it’s also much more disappointing than George Seaton’s take nearly half a century earlier.
With the Cole’s department store’s Thanksgiving Day parade ushering in the holiday shopping season, a gentleman going by the name of Kris Kringle (Richard Attenborough) steps in at the last moment to become the parade’s Santa Claus. After winning raves from the store’s executives, Kris is hired on as the full-time store Santa. He proceeds to cause a ruckus after starting a trend by sending Cole’s customers to rival stores for their Christmas gifts if Cole’s doesn’t have them. This move builds customer loyalty and looks to be a solution to Cole’s recent troubles brought on by bigger, brighter and newer super-stores.
Kris claims that he is the real deal from the North Pole. His boss at Cole’s is Dorey Walker (Elizabeth Perkins), director of special events and believer in no things magical such as flying reindeer or jovial fat men sneaking down chimneys on Christmas Eve. A single mother, Dorey has instilled a serious ethic in her young daughter Susan (Mara Wilson). Upon meeting Kris both Dorey and Susan’s fondness for everything literal starts to shift as they notice a twinkle of sorts in Kris’ eyes. And they’re not the only ones. Kris is quickly the store Santa with the highest regard. When competing stores can’t lure him away from Cole’s they plan to ruin him. The result is a trial over his sanity that so beautifully framed the original film together but now feels like little more than a static plot point.
While corporate culture plays a major role in both versions of Miracle, the original had suits that had faces. The Macy’s executives were humans just like everyone else, not afraid to mingle amongst their employees. They fit right in with the store culture and were a part of it themselves. Some 50 years later, executives are schemers who super-sized their offices instead of their fries at McDonald’s. They live in a separate world highlighted by drab grays and stark darkness. They are more akin to the Big Brother-inspired screens from Chaplin’s Modern Times than they are members of a company. This distance highlights a major problem in Mayfield’s Miracle. Everyone is pulled apart and working on their own. There is no cohesiveness to the film’s characters as they exist in a sterile world. This is not the type of place you’d find Christmas magic.
Edmund Gwenn won an Academy Award for his take as Santa in the original. Sadly Attenborough doesn’t stand up as Kris Kringle. There just isn’t enough joy in his face to make me believe. And that’s the whole point of the film, isn’t it? This update isn’t particularly bad. It’s got a clean, streamlined look that captures New York on a good hair day. The performances are, on a whole, solid. There’s nothing all that memorable that stands out other than they’re not bad. Mara Wilson is cute but serious as she ought to be playing Susan. Perkins looks and works well as her mother.
I guess I struggle with the cliché question that arises from most every remake: what’s the point of messing with something that worked well the first time out. The obvious answer other than box office gold, is to update the classic to fit a modern audience. But the original tells a timeless story that is equally relevant now as it was 50 years ago. As time goes on, one version of Miracle on 34th Street will continue to enchant. The other will play in reruns on television over and over again, with a few people stopping in after some long and tiring channel surfing, watching it because it’s on rather than actively seeking it out. I’ll let you guess which version I think is which.
Miracle on 34th Street Trailer
