Dear Santa (2024)
Directed by: Bobby Farrelly
Premise: Due to a spelling error, a boy’s (Robert Timothy Smith) letter to Santa goes to Satan (Jack Black) instead. The devil offers the boy three wishes in exchange for his soul.
What Works: The best moments of Dear Santa are between the boy’s parents, played by Brianne Howey and Hayes MacArthur. The movie starts with their marriage on the rocks due to the unexpected death of one of their children and Howey and MacArthur play that pretty well. Grief and guilt underlie their fights about Christmas décor and parenting strategies.
What Doesn’t: The family’s tragic backstory is indicative of Dear Santa’s fatal flaw. This story is all over the place both tonally and narratively. It’s not clear what Dear Santa is supposed to be about; the story has many narrative threads. Liam is a sixth grader dealing with his parent’s disintegrating marriage, his crush on Emma (Kai Cech), and his friendship with Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker). When he’s propositioned by Satan, Liam uses his first wish to make himself attractive to Emma and the film sets up the cliché little white lie plotline but doesn’t follow it through. The influence of the devil threatens to corrupt Liam and end his friendships but his worst action is talking harshly to an obnoxious teacher. The whole film is slack with no sense of drama or urgency. The risk to Liam’s soul is underplayed and the story collapses in a truly stupid and awful ending that evades any themes of personal responsibility or dramatic payoff. The tone is also mishandled. Dear Santa is ostensibly a Christmas movie but nothing about it feels particularly seasonal. Parts of the story are dramatic and heavy but other moment are silly; the pieces don’t fit together. Dear Santa is pitched as a kid-friendly family movie but the humor skews older in a way that will not be funny or appropriate for children. The special effects are also inconsistent. Some digital effects look quite terrible.
Disc extras: Available on Paramount+.
Bottom Line: It appears the filmmaker of Dear Santa wanted to make a family film like Elf but they also wanted to make a counter-holiday movie like Bad Santa and the compromise is a mess. Dear Santa is incoherent and not really made for anyone.
Episode: #1028 (December 22, 2024)