It was a two-fer of Vince Vaughn movies on Saturday. First I caught early Vince Vaughn in Rudy and then I watched some more recent Vince Vaughn in Fred Claus.

When I was taking screenwriting classes, I had the bright idea that the best movie to write from a purely financial standpoint would be a Christmas movie. If it’s any good, it will have good sales year after year on DVD and be syndicated to kingdom come. Write a hit Christmas movie and then sit back and let the royalty checks pour in every December.

The idea I came up with in class was for a movie about Santa’s brother. The guy would be the opposite of Santa in every way possible and would have the goal of ruining Christmas, like the Grinch, but on a worldwide scale. I never got past a paragraph long story idea for it. The makers of Fred Claus did a much better job with the Santa’s brother concept than my paltry idea could ever hope to achieve. It’s a very cute Christmas movie and I really enjoyed watching it.

I think one of Fred Claus’s strengths is that it made Fred a sympathetic character right from the start. Young Nicholas Claus is very similar to Own Wilson in Little Fockers. He means well and is always doing good deeds, but he doesn’t quite get how his actions, altruistic as they may be, hurt those closest to him. In Little Fockers, it was Owen Wilson unintentionally screwing over Ben Stiller. In Fred Claus, it’s young Santa Claus screwing over his big brother Fred.

If you’re looking for a good Christmas comedy that you can watch around the kids, you’d do well with Fred Claus.