MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (Directed by Les Mayfield. Starring Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott, J.t.Walsh)

’Tis surely the season of overindulgence, and here with a genuine puke fest is producer John Hughes and a sugar saturated remake of a 1947 classic that was too sweet first time round. Richard Attenborough, possibly the worst (successful) actor and most over-rated director in film history, finally finds a role suited to his blubbery over-emotionalism, thin grasp of character and white beard: Santa Claus. Do you really need to know anymore? I kept hoping a stray dinosaur from Jurassic Park would wander on set and finally eat him (if ever a character deserved to die, it was his Jurassic professor), or that the ghost of his cut-throat Pinky from Brighton Rock would mug him on 34th street out of embarassment for what he had become. This manipulative crap is final proof, if it is needed, that there is no Santa: if he did exist, he’d sue for defamation of character.