9 / 10
Klaus is Sergio Pablos’s 2019 Spanish-British-American animated film depicting a spoiled wealthy postman exiled to a remote frozen island town as part of a discipline-by-failure plan from his estranged father, who becomes friends with a reclusive toymaker living in the woods and inadvertently invents the modern Santa Claus tradition. Jason Schwartzman voices Jesper. J.K. Simmons voices Klaus. Rashida Jones voices Alva. Joan Cusack voices Mrs. Krum. Will Sasso voices Mr. Ellingboe. The screenplay was written by Sergio Pablos, Jim Mahoney, and Zach Lewis. The Spanish animation studio The SPA Studios produced the film for Netflix release in November 2019. Klaus was the first feature production from former Disney animator Sergio Pablos’s studio and used a hybrid 2D-3D rendering technique developed specifically for the film.
Klaus is one of the most successful Santa-origin films ever made and possibly the strongest theatrical-quality animated feature of the late 2010s. Pablos worked at Disney during the 1990s including on Tarzan and Treasure Planet, and the film carries the Disney house-style draftsmanship while applying it to a darker pre-Christmas town than Disney would have rendered. The fictional town of Smeerensburg is divided between two feuding family clans whose members brutalize each other generationally, and the film’s central question is whether the introduction of small acts of kindness can interrupt a self-sustaining cycle of social cruelty. The answer the film provides is conditional and slow rather than miraculous.
Sergio Pablos’s Visual Style
Klaus combines hand-drawn 2D character animation with 3D lighting and rendering effects produced through software developed at The SPA Studios. The resulting images carry the warmth of traditional cel animation with the depth and atmospheric effects of modern computer animation. The hybrid technique solves the long-standing problem of how to give 2D animation the dimensionality that modern audiences expect without abandoning the hand-drawn aesthetic.
The visual style is the production’s strongest single argument for itself. The town of Smeerensburg is rendered with weather, fog, and snow that move three-dimensionally around two-dimensional characters. The forest where Klaus lives carries depth and texture that traditional cel animation could not have produced. The film looks like nothing else in animation history.
For Writers
Hybrid animation techniques can solve particular aesthetic problems that pure 2D or pure 3D animation cannot solve alone. Klaus’s visual style is a direct technical response to audience expectations about animated dimensionality.
The Anti-Sentiment Approach
Pablos’s screenplay refuses easy sentimentality at every available opportunity. Jesper is a self-interested protagonist who befriends Klaus for fundamentally cynical reasons. The townspeople accept gifts and toys initially as transactions rather than as expressions of community. The Klaus-Jesper friendship develops slowly and through small recurring contact rather than through dramatic single events. Even the closing-act emotional payoff is delivered in restrained gestures rather than in declarations.
The refusal of sentimentality is the reason the film’s eventual sentiment lands harder than less restrained Christmas productions can manage. When Klaus’s history with his deceased wife and the wooden toys is finally revealed, the film has earned the emotional weight through eighty preceding minutes of refusing to ask for it. The structural patience is the production’s craft.
For Writers
Sentimental payoffs in Christmas productions land harder when the preceding screenplay refuses preemptive emotional manipulation. Klaus’s restraint is what makes its eventual feelings effective.
The Origin-Story Architecture
The screenplay invents a coherent set of explanations for Santa Claus traditions through the natural progression of the Jesper-Klaus story rather than through retrofitted origin material. The lists of children who want toys arise naturally from logistical problems. The chimney delivery method emerges from a specific home’s security situation. The reindeer enter the story through a particular late-act circumstance. Each Santa-tradition element gets a story-based origin rather than a thrown-in joke.
The cumulative effect produces a Santa myth that the film has earned. By the time the elderly Klaus, his wife, and the bearded delivery-man imagery appear in their familiar form, the screenplay has built every element from previously planted material. The result is one of the strongest origin-story constructions in contemporary animation.
For Writers
Origin stories work best when each element of the eventual myth has been planted earlier in the screenplay rather than introduced through plot convenience. Klaus’s architecture demonstrates the technique.
Craft Note
Klaus cost approximately forty million dollars and was produced over five years, with Netflix providing financing and distribution. The film received six Annie Award nominations and won seven, including Best Animated Feature. It also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature, losing to Toy Story 4. The film was Netflix’s first major animated feature production and its success contributed to Netflix’s subsequent expansion of animated theatrical-feature financing.
Verdict
Klaus is the strongest new addition to the Christmas-cinema canon in decades and a high point of late-2010s animation. Pablos’s visual style, the anti-sentiment narrative approach, and the elegant origin-story architecture combine to produce a film that earns its eventual seasonal warmth without conceding craftsmanship for the emotional payoff. Strongly recommended for annual rotation alongside the classic canon.
FAQ
Who directed Klaus?
Sergio Pablos directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay. He was previously a Disney animator who worked on Tarzan, Treasure Planet, and Hercules.
Is Klaus a Netflix original?
Yes. Netflix financed and distributed the film as part of its expansion into animated feature production. Klaus was one of Netflix’s first major animated theatrical-quality releases.
Where was Klaus produced?
The SPA Studios in Spain produced the film under Sergio Pablos’s direction. Animation work also involved studios in France and other European territories.
Did Klaus win Academy Awards?
Klaus received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature in 2020 but lost to Toy Story 4. The film won seven Annie Awards, the animation industry’s highest annual honors, including Best Animated Feature.
What is the animation style?
Klaus uses a hybrid 2D-3D rendering technique developed specifically for the film. Hand-drawn 2D character animation is combined with 3D lighting and atmospheric effects rendered through proprietary software.
How long is Klaus?
Klaus runs approximately ninety-six minutes.
What is the film’s rating?
Klaus is rated PG for some thematic elements and rude humor.