I fondly remember the 1974 Rankin-Bass version of "The Year Without A Santa Claus" and was looking forward to seeing this. I feel let down by it in just about every aspect. The casting was so-so, John Goodman did a fair job as Santa, but Delta Burke as Mrs. Claus wasn't given as much to do as Shirley Booth in the original. Chris Kattan's Sparky became annoying quite quickly, as did the script's constant barrage of in-jokes for adults (since it was shown at the 9PM-11PM time slot they probably thought it was necessary to attract an adult audience.) But the most grievous fault of this film was to fail to capitalize on the most memorable part of the original: the Miser Brothers. Their catchy ragtime theme song was the one thing that people associate with the original. I felt the casting of Harvey Fierstein and Michael McKean was not strong, plus the idea of splicing together the brothers singing instead of having each one sing his version separately diminished the impact of the song. If they were going to stretch it out to two hours, they certainly should have found time for both versions of the song. Carol Kane's Mother Nature seemed to me to be a direct ripoff of her Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooged. Stick with the 1974 version, this film is a Christmas turkey.