Suppose someone discovered an actual tooth fairy, a small flying humanoid with the alchemical power to transform human bone into currency. Can you imagine the carnage? The bodies would pile up but the cemeteries would be empty. Economies would shatter, countries would fall.

But that’s absurd – there’s no such thing as a tooth fairy. Everyone knows it’s the tooth mouse that brings you money in the night.

The real-world ramifications of the fairy tales we tell our children are amusingly disturbing. The Nelms brothers capitalised on the intrigue of such a transposition to create Fatman, probably the most bizarre Christmas film of the year.

Fatman

Santa exists, and he’s a badass. Chris Cringle a.k.a. Saint Nicholas lives with his wife Ruth on a Canadian farm where the couple run Santa’s workshop. The factory is under contract with the United States government, which is incentivised to support it because “holiday spirit generates holiday spending”. In the real world, it all comes down to money. The festive season is the largest global economic stimulus of the year, and you can bet that “altruism is not a deductible on their bottom line”.

Santa’s existence is public knowledge, so it’s seen as his responsibility to motivate children to stay on their best behaviour, and it’s he who is blamed for the misbehaviour and even criminal activities of young people.

With more and more youths being naughty instead of nice, Santa is delivering more coal and fewer presents every year, and struggling to keep his workshop in the black. In a desperate attempt to save the factory, he looks for employment with both China and Elon Musk. Unlucky on that front, he is forced to put the elves to work for the US military, building control panels for fighter jets.

To add to Chris’s troubles, he’s also being pursued by a hit-man with daddy issues who’s salty about never getting Christmas gifts as a child; and there’s a high-achieving, little-shit rich kid who seems to have escaped from a Wes Anderson film in order to play the superfluous super villain.

The Santa Claus of this harsh world is a gruff, grim-faced old timer with a grizzled beard who chugs whiskey and uses Santa-branded cooldrink cans as shooting practice. He also has superhuman strength, because why not? And there’s one more thing you should know about Santa. He’s played by Mel Gibson.

That changes everything. This is the man who made the deranged, violently Christian film The Passion of the Christ. This is Mel Gibson the abusive, sexist, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, religious fundamentalist. Nice guy. Suddenly the joke of casting Father Christmas as a violent tough guy is a bit too real.

It seems like Mel Gibson has been in rehabilitation for ages. After he was recorded spewing an anti-Semitic rant during his infamous arrest in 2006, he instantly became damaged goods, and four years later, when racist tapes of him shouting at and threatening his ex-wife were leaked, it seemed certain that we’d never see his name in a Hollywood credit again.

But the years were kinder than they should have been. In 2016, Hacksaw Ridge, Gibson’s first film since being exposed as a ghoul, won several Oscars and received critical acclaim. Between then and now he’s acted in a variety of B – Z rate movies, and nobody quite knows what to do about him.

Gibson got lucky with the timing of his resurgence. In 2017, while he was capitalising on the success of Hacksaw Ridge to force his way back onto the big screen, the world became suddenly preoccupied with a specific breed of Hollywood misogynist – Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey etc.

With big household names being eaten alive by #MeToo on account of sexual harassment and rape, Gibson’s return was glossed over. His little-bit-of-everything style vitriol was too obscure, and his despicable character was old news.

But few Hollywood egos are satisfied with being glossed over, even if it’s saving them from deserved retribution. He wants the approval of Mad Max, he wants Braveheart, he wants Apocalypto. Messed up as he is, Gibson is clearly talented, and he craves to be accepted and recognised as he once was, so Fatman, his latest attempt at an acting comeback, includes what appears to be a series of strange on-screen apologies.

He plays a character who has admitted defeat. He’s a frazzled weather-beaten has-been who’s ashamed of his failure and having let everyone down. “Maybe it’s time I retired. I’ve lost my influence.”

He’s married to a strong black woman whom he respects and depends on and the two of them share more than a few heartfelt moments of encouragement. The first one was sort of sweet (their stiff lack of chemistry notwithstanding) but by the third, the audience is just baffled. Seriously? Another forced, humble, loving dialogue?

Having directed a film as zealously Christian as The Passion of the Christ, it’s also worth noting that Fatman pokes fun at Christmas, suggesting that he might possibly have pacified his fundamentalism to some extent, or at least stopped taking himself so seriously.

It’s all more likely a PR stunt than a genuine apology. Gibson has made several actual apologies in the past that were obviously informed by both his career aspirations and a pack of lawyers.

Fatman rounds up to a sort of interesting film. Its humour elicits snide smiles rather than “hohoho” belly guffaws. It asks you to take a fairy tale seriously but also makes light of it constantly. It seems confused as to whether it’s a comedy about saving the spirit of Christmas or a cynical military action thriller. It’s fairly entertaining throughout, but it ends abruptly with an old-school fire and brimstone moral of the story that is entirely unsatisfying and downright freaky; so it’s fair to say that the film is less than the sum of its parts.

More important than the film itself is the question of whether Mel Gibson should be given another chance. Is a decade of exile long enough for someone to genuinely repent? Do we still watch Woody Allen movies and listen to Michael Jackson?

In the midst of the information age, when the sins of the famous are not so easily hidden, the jury’s out on whether collective condemnation is enough, or whether the work of disgraced artists should be boycotted completely as punishment. DM/ ML

Fatman is available for rental on ITunes or Amazon Prime.
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