Reviews

One only needs to go on youtube and look at many of Sarah Palin's interviews during the 2008 campaign to see this movie is pretty accurate. The book from which it was made, took a lot of it's own material from her interviews.

As Historical Drama's go, this one was one of the best I've seen in awhile as far as getting as close to what actually happened. I have no doubt scenes were embellished.

Whether you choose to believe this movie is an accurate depiction of what happen or not, this movie is worth seeing on entertainment value alone. Great cast who all play their respective rolls well, interesting topic and in the end, this movie alone was worth this months subscription fee for HBO.

I liked this movie having seen it in the English dubbed version. I was not aware of any of the actors so the for-mentioned appearance of a Finnish Pop Star (Antti Tuisku) wasn't something I was looking for and felt the character blended in well as it was kept short.

For those that mention this Santa version vs the USA version, I have only one thing to say....The North Pole is in Canada, not the USA. And I think the Finnish version did a nice job of giving Santa (of any version) that classic look of what he may have seemed like in the beginning. For reference purposes the USA/Canadian version of Santa was created by the Coca Cola company for advertisement purposes and was never meant to become the North American standard version.

The movie to me was sad, funny and thoughtful. I thought it went a long way to give a classic children's myth a realistic beginning. My three daughters (21, 18 & 13) watched this with me and all loved it. The only complaint was the dubbing. They had never seen a foreign movie before and assumed no matter where it was made the lips should match the English words......kids.

I gave this movie a high rating based on what I saw. I don't look at the cinematography or pay much attention to musical scores. I watch a movie and it either resonates with me or it doesn't and this one did.

My only regret is that I don't speak Finnish so I could judge the difference between the acting and hearing the characters as they were written as opposed to the overdub.