In the realm of Christmas movies, there are the wickedly dark satires like "Bad Santa," and there are the inoffensive, cleverly cute family films such as "Elf." The misguided "Fred Claus" proves, definitively, that attempts to marry these two comic genres represents a dreadful lapse in creative judgment. Kind of like buying your mother a sex toy for Christmas.

Vince Vaughn plays Fred Claus, elder brother to Santa (Paul Giamatti). Fred the character suffers from a toxic case of sibling rivalry, while Vaughn the actor looks bored, puffy and anxious to exit the set.

Fred is forced to work at the North Pole as a result of ... wait, do we care? We all know we're here to watch this jerk grow a heart, by whatever half-baked contrivances screenwriter Dan Fogelman and Jessie Nelson (credited with the story) cook up. Their unfortunate attempts to create drama -- the North Pole is in danger of being shut down by an efficiency expert -- are almost as shabby as their senses of humor.

Inside Santa's workshop, Fred befriends a bunch of elves, some of whom are little people, others full-sized actors whose heads have been digitally reduced and pasted onto the bodies of actual dwarfs. You have not seen tasteless until you've seen the shrunken head of rapper-turned-actor Ludacris atop a little person wrestling with Vince Vaughn.

Movies this ill-conceived are rare, but the notion that director David Dobkin ("Wedding Crashers") could run a cast of this caliber into the ground is

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almost impressive. Award winners like Giamatti, Kathy Bates, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey and Rachel Weisz struggle valiantly to elevate the material, but it's hopeless. The movie has exactly one funny scene, and it involves a sibling support group attended by other "famous" brothers, including Frank Stallone, Stephen Baldwin and Roger Clinton.

This lifted "Fred Claus" out of the realm of F grades, but will the 12-and-under set -- the most likely victims of this atrocity -- get the joke?

Reach Mary F. Pols at mpols@bayareanewsgroup.com or 925-945-4741. Read her blog at http://cctextra.com/blogs/shortcuts.

"FRED CLAUS"

D-

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, John Michael Higgins, Miranda Richardson, Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates, Ludacris, Elizabeth Banks, Kevin Spacey

Director: David Dobkin

Rated: PG for some mild language and rude humor

Opens today: Bay Area theaters

Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes