He is Henri Young an Alcatraz inmate pushed over the edge after three years in solitary confinement

He is Henri Young, an Alcatraz inmate pushed over the edge after three years in solitary confinement. He makes the bright jokes blinding, and gives the dull ones new sheen. Yet there's a coarseness that he shares with Bill Murray (who tempered the schmaltz of Scrooged): you sense that his sarcasm could break the skin and inflict mortal injury. The writers allow themselves too much seasonal goodwill, but John Pasquin (who directed Allen in the sitcom Home Improvement) sours their sugar by allowing Allen's personality, part-Oscar the Grouch, part-SuperDad, to roam as freely as his character's waistline.It's interesting that a roughly 15-rated performer should choose a U- rated children's comedy to make his film debut He has immense warmth.

Through a series of contrivances too bizarre to explain, Allen dons the Santa suit and finds himself in the North Pole (which looks like a cross between Hamleys and Thunderdome). There, he is informed that by climbing into the costume, he has become subject to "the Santa clause": he is the new Pere Noel. And within weeks, he's sprouting a lush, shiny beard, putting on weight and generally becoming Kenny Rogers.The screenplay, by Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick, proffers the ingenious notion that the identity of Santa Claus is transient, something passed on like a baton in the manner of James Bond or Dr Who. It's shot in black and white and on a low budget, but without any great resourcefulness. Michael Maloney, in particular, is lit so as to take all the grain from his face, and is enticed away from the low-key register where his acting seems truthful Joan Collins as his agent does what she does best.

She survives.The film is intended to provide some seasonal uplift, set as it is in the run-up to Christmas. But In the Bleak Midwinter is only likely to end up as the answer to a riddle in a Christmas cracker: "What's broad and thin and weak and tired?"n On release from Friday. My favourite film of the week is the only one that delivers on its every promise, and makes you giggle because it's meant to. It also happens to be the one that features SAS-style elves, and a trainee Father Christmas being despicable to a girl who catches him in the fireplace ("Do you want this or not?" he barks, shaking a rag doll in her face "Right Then go to sleep!"). We're getting The Santa Clause a whole year after its US release but it's been worth the wait. The jokes are as crisp and crunchy as that first stretch of sparkling snow. And you can feel the movie's star, Tim Allen, marvelling from his bedroom window at all the freshly fallen zingers laid out before him, pulling on his wellies and stomping out to be the first to leave his footprints. He plays Scott Calvin, a divorced father whose son Charlie (Eric Lloyd) spends Christmas Eve with him, half-knowing that they will end up eating their turkey in a restaurant (a tragically funny scene: Allen glances around and sees every table seating a similar combination of humble father and glum offspring).That night, the pair are disturbed by a ruckus, and rush outside only to see Santa Claus topple off the roof.

Will he be true to himself? In the end, Shakespeare transforms them all with his magic.In the Bleak Midwinter is a film about theatre that manages to patronise both art forms. Worthless, trashy Hollywood abruptly (and wholly unconvincingly) tempts Joe with mega bucks and mega fame. These two are kindred spirits because they share a suppressed playfulness apparently behind their humourless intensity. Never mind that the designer has been played as nine parts Edith Sitwell to one part Madonna (she tells the cast it's a good omen for the show if her nipples get stiff), and seemed at first to have her eye on Ophelia. Other cast members need the approval of a parent, or some equally standard endorsement of their value. Next, alliances are forged - so arbitrarily that they could be chosen by Branagh at random - between the theatre queen and a lifelong homophobe (Richard Briers), who both revere Henry Irving; between the health nut and the production's designer (Celia Imrie). None of this seems to have any basis in experience: it's as if Branagh, wanting to shed his arch luvvie label, is trying to ingratiate himself with the audience by saying: everything you think about these silly people is true.Then, stereotypically, traumas start to be displayed, the theatre queen has been rejected by the son he never knew - though the boy does send the occasional postcard (that's a trauma?).