B-

Eight years is a long gestation period for a sequel nowadays, but a substantial hiatus is no guarantee of quality–after all, it took half a decade to devise last summer’s thoroughly pedestrian “Men in Black II.” The time has been better spent in putting together “The Santa Clause 2.” The second installment of Tim Allen’s first (and most successful) big screen enterprise thus far doesn’t have as high a bar to reach as Barry Sonnenfeld’s picture did–after all, the original 1994 flick was hardly a classic. It was, however, a reasonably clever family film which nicely combined slapstick and warmth; and the good holiday news is that the new movie, smoothly directed by Michael Lembeck, comes close to matching it. Parents can take their kids to “The Santa Clause 2” with confidence that the children should be content and they themselves mildly amused.

The basic premise is one that goes back cinematically at least to Buster Keaton, and dramatically a lot further than that–about a fellow who has to find a bride quickly. In the case of Scott Calvin (Tim Allen), the ordinary joe who became Santa in the initial movie, he learns that he has to marry by Christmas Eve–not for fear of losing a big inheritance, like the hero of “Seven Chances,” but of being forced to give up the job he’s learned to love. Scott’s return from the North Pole, however, has a second purpose as well: to help his son Charlie (Eric Lloyd), whose rebelliousness at school has earned the ire of his no-nonsense principal, Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell). It comes as no surprise that it will be Ms. Newman that Scott romances while getting his son back on the right track. But there’s yet another wrinkle: to keep the toy factory humming in his absence, Scott lets himself be talked into creating a plastic duplicate of himself to run the Pole in his stead. Unfortunately, the replica (also played by Allen, in heavy makeup) grows rigidly rule-obsessed, and before long he’s turned into a petty dictator. Scott, Carol and Charlie will have to get back to Santa’s village in time to defeat the fake Claus and his minions and arrange a quick marriage ceremony if kids are to receive presents rather than lumps of coal on the big morning.

Two out of the three elements present in this composite work quite well. The romantic plot, though predictable enough–Scott and Carol are like oil and water at the start, and it’s only gradually that she warms to him after much banter and bickering–develops some genuine warmth, largely because Allen and Mitchell make a good team. The script builds a few too many heart-tugging, ostentatiously magical moments into their courtship, but they still carry them off. The relationship between Scott and Charlie is okay too, even if the reasons behind the kid’s attitude come across as artificial. Unfortunately, the business about the renegade duplicate grows far too loud and frenetic to afford much pleasure. As played, in the broadest strokes and the most stentorian tones, by Allen, the latex Santa is, with the exception of a few moments (for example, a football game in which he demolishes some elves), an obnoxious bore. That means that the latter part of the picture has more low points than high ones. Some may also take umbrage at the commercial conception of Christmas that underlies the plot, with its emphasis on gift-giving–but it’s hard to imagine how any movie about Santa could avoid that (even “Miracle on 34th Street” didn’t, in the end).

And there are compensations. Allen has the gruff charm bit down pat, and Mitchell moves easily from hard-edged administrator to sweet helpmate. Lloyd remains a likable fellow, though he’s grown a lot over eight years, and Judge Reinhold and Wendy Crewson have fun with the stiffness of his mother and stepdad. On the North Pole front, David Krumholtz and Spencer Breslin will delight the tykes in the audience, as will the animatronic/animated reindeer, especially the wacky Comet; adults will probably be more taken with the other legendary figures–Mother Nature, the Easter Bunny, Cupid, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy–who show up to confer with Santa over common problems. Art Lafleur is especially winning as the Tooth Fairy, who becomes one of the heroes of the narrative toward the close. Disney is probably working on a spinoff script for him already.

On the technical side, “The Santa Clause 2” is impressive. The North Pole has been lovingly imagined and realized, and the wintry scenes back in the “real world” have a touch of old- fashioned elegance, too. The art direction (by Sandy Cochrane) and production design (by Tony Burrough) combine to create a similar (though not so odd) sort of landscape to that which most audiences found so fetching in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Unfortunately, the whole Bad Santa episode in this picture is reminiscent of the more frantic, oversized aspects of that Jim Carrey holiday flick, too. Happily, there’s enough in “Santa Clause 2” on more modest and human a scale to offset the coarser elements. Like its predecessor, it’s no classic, but it provides a reasonably attractive holiday contraption, one that families looking for a clean, kid-friendly outing should investigate.

“Writers are just like potato chips–you just can’t get enough of them,” said an expansive, voluble Tim Allen as he lounged in a Dallas hotel suite munching on cashews during a promotional tour for “The Santa Clause 2.” Then, in jocular exaggeration he added, in egomaniacal-producer tones, “I like that! Somebody write that down!”

Allen was in town with co-star Elizabeth Mitchell and director Michael Lembeck, and was discussing the difficulties in getting the script right for the sequel to his 1994 feature debut, which scored big at the boxoffice and is a continuing draw in annual television showings. “It gets better ratings on the ABC Sunday Night Movie every year,” he interjected. “It’s one of the few movies that’s ever done that. It’s becoming a classic.”

That’s why Allen was so intent on making “Santa Clause 2” a worthy successor to the earlier film. “For me,” he explained, “[the greatest danger is] that you’ll screw up the original, which I had to remind Disney they make more money on each year… So I kept telling them, I kept reminding them, [about] sequels that work… I said I knew what it takes, and you’ve got to trust me.” As Allen described the long, drawn-out writing process, which he said–perhaps seriously–eventually involved sixteen contributors, it was touch-and-go to the very end. “The daunting part is telling the studio, ‘No, I don’t want the money and I don’t want the work,’ when I could have just said yes to both and not care. And I don’t want to sound all altruistic. It’s just that I love movies, and I like watching movies that make sense…. [And late in the process] we gave up. We got to the point where we all got frustrated. They greenlit the script, and I said I don’t want to do this. But we pushed through.”

One thing that helped was Lembeck’s joining the team. “He came in in mid-process,” Allen said, “when it was just in flux. The studio and I were really disagreeing on which direction to take it, if we were going to take it at all. We really didn’t think they were going to do this–we were so far apart. And then Michael came in”–along with still more new writers–“…and made the thing. He came to the set every day with an attitude that was great.”

The director, making his big-screen debut after a good deal of TV work on series like “Friends,” and Mitchell, who plays the hard-edged school principal whom Allen’s Scott Calvin romances (to get her to marry him before Christmas so that he can remain Santa Claus), were no less enthusiastic about Allen. Lembeck responded to a query whether his star had been as rambunctious on the set as he was in the interview by saying, “Every day, every single day, and if you couldn’t keep up with this–it was 6:30am to 6:30pm just like this, screaming and hollering and mayhem every day.” But, he quickly added, “We finished on time, under budget, we had no second-unit shooting, we did everything ourselves, and [the studio is] very happy with us.”

Mitchell, a native Dallasite, credited Lembeck with her casting. “I guess Michael saw me on ‘E.R.,'” she said. “He came to me, and he was adorable, and he was excited, and he was as passionate as I like people to be talking about things that they love. And then I met Tim, and he had me in stitches, and then he had me in tears… [Tim’s] the funniest man anyone knows, and Michael’s the warmest–he’s amazing.” She added: “This is a labor of love for these guys. When you think about it, any sequel could have been done, and it would have made a lot of money, because it’s ‘Santa Clause 2.’ But they chose not to do that–they chose to do something that meant a lot to them–they hand-picked everybody for what they thought it would bring to the movie. It made it a joy.” Playing against Allen, she added, was extremely easy. “What I feel with Tim is, if you’ve ever played tennis with a really good tennis player who’s playing just for you, and you have your racket up and basically you hit every ball, that’s what Tim did for me…. I held up my racket, and everything he threw at me bounced back eventually. I just kept holding up my racket.”

One thing all three agreed on was the joy of working with all the children who played elves in Santa’s North Pole factory. “As crotchety and cranky as I could get [putting on the makeup],” Allen said, “as soon as I walked out of the tent there’s children going, ‘Santa, Santa!’ They thought they were working with Santa.” Lembeck added, “For them it was fantasy-fulfillment…. It was the most patient, attentive, enthusiastic, kind group of children one could ever be blessed with–350 kids just being magnificent during the course of the day, and it’s 100o on the set.” Mitchell chimed in: “They thought I was Mrs. Claus. They hung on me, they wanted to hug me all the time. I came from a big family–it wasn’t a problem. I thought it was great. I could have five kids on either arm and be perfectly fine. I loved it.”

And many family audiences are likely to love “The Santa Claus 2.”