Dear Santa (now streaming on Paramount+) marks the creative reunion of the Farrelly Brothers, after a decade apart (their last movie together was 2014’s Dumb and Dumber To), with Peter Farrelly directing and Bobby Farrelly writing (with Ricky Blitt and Dan Ewen). It also marks the filmmakers’ reunion with their Shallow Hal star Jack Black, who here plays the Unsanta, namely Satan, who’s summoned from Heck when an unsuspecting kid lets a fatal typo fly on his letter to the Jolly Old Elf. Anyone else kinda surprised this one didn’t bother with a theatrical release? I mean, those are some Names up there, Names that you’d think might get people in theaters to see an almost family-friendly PG-13 Christmas movie, even if it’s not very good. Or maybe I already answered that question in that sentence.
DEAR SANTA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Eleven-year-old Liam Turner (Robert Timothy Smith) has dyslexia. Now, it’s not uncommon for characters in Farrelly Bros. movies to have some form of mental or physical challenge – it’s kinda their M.O. – but in this case, it’s a major plot point. Liam and his parents, Molly (Brianne Howey) and Bill (Hayes MacArthur), use the phrase “learning differences.” And it’s something Molly and Bill fight about. They fight about everything lately. Loud enough for Liam to hear in his bedroom with the door shut. They even fight about how Liam’s at that awkward age where the believing-in-Santa thing is pretty touch-and-go. Should he write a letter to Santa this year or not? He wants to, so let him, Molly argues. So he does, addressing it to “Dear Satan” at the “North Lope.” And in a movie that questions the existence of Santa and never provides a definitive answer, it confirms that Old Scratch is oh-so-very real. Curious.
Now, before we get to the part where Satan appears in Liam’s closet, we must hammer home the poor kid’s outsider status: On top of the “learning differences,” he’s new in town and new to his school and isn’t great at making friends, although he’s started palling around with Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker), a kid who has yet to grow into his teeth, which are tragically comically huge. In order to impress his parents with his kindness, Liam lied to his parents that Gibby has cancer – “If you meet them, you just have to act a little cancery,” is Liam’s instruction to his friend. Liam crushes on a girl at school named Emma (Kai Cech), staves off the bully who happens to be dating her and spars with his pretentious windbag of a teacher, Mr. Charles (P.J. Byrne). Who said being a kid is easy?
But one dude can make everything easy for Liam. Yep. That’s right. You Know Who. He throws on a raggedy Santa hat, manifests in Liam’s room with a flurry that can only be described as Jack Blackian and offers the kid three wishes. Why? Not sure. But I assume it’s because Beelzebub likes to sow mayhem! And also because the movie needs a plot! Liam’s first wish is to kindle romantic interest with Emma, which involves taking her to a Post Malone concert, and before you can poke a big hole in the plot by asking where an 11-year-old gets like, I dunno, $700 to pay for tickets via Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” gougey ripoff system, Satan magically provides front-row seats. There’s a bit where Liam’s parents sic a child psychologist (Keegan-Michael Key) on him because they think he’s hallucinating, and another where Satan makes Mr. Charles soil himself – and then Liam learns that the wishes come at a price no one on this planet can afford: Ticketmaster “convenience” fees. Er, I mean, his soul.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Dear Santa aims to be a slightly edgy inversion of Xmas traditions, in a similar vein as Candy Cane Lane or Fred Claus, with the slight whiff of a sanitized Bad Santa vibe.
Performance Worth Watching: This one’s a bit of a struggle. The ho-hum material fails everyone equally. But there is a bit where Key chokes on a nut (almond or pistachio, I couldn’t quite tell) that inspires a quarter-chuckle.
Memorable Dialogue: He sure ain’t Santa: “HO HO FRICKIN’ HO.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Satan and Liam have an odd relationship here where the former likes to lightly torture but also sort of help the latter. All this talk of soul-selling (a topic explored far more effectively in Simpsons episode “Bart Sells His Soul”) could be dark but it really isn’t, and it’s therefore never particularly engaging. But it never gets icky: “Why would I touch you?” Satan says to Liam. “I’m the devil, not a trusted relative.” OK, I was wrong – that was icky. Icky as hell. But Satan continues: “Sorry,” he says, as the screenwriters try to backpedal a little after that nasty bit. “We get a lot of those creepy uncle types down where I’m from,” he adds, proving that the screenwriters were actually trying to make everything worse.
So. Knowing that, are you game to plop the kids down with a bowl of popcorn and fire up Dear Santa? Ehhhhhhh. Pedo jokes just don’t strike me as viable family entertainment for some reason. Granted, most of Dear Santa is much less wrongheaded, and far more forgettable. Such is the film’s tonal conundrum. Does it want to be a crass inversion of cheery holiday-season tropes? Does it want to be a sentimental celebration of togetherness like many other Xmas movies? Does it want to be an adult comedy? Does it want to appeal to the tweener demographic?
The answer to all of these is yes, and in pursuit of a little-bit-of-something-for-everyone agenda, it ends up being a zero-appeal nothing-for-nobody mess. The Farrellys apparently believe asking Jack Black to lean way into his past-its-prime manic-eyebrows/devious-grin shtick is enough to compensate for a dashed-off screenplay that recycles creaky ideas and gags, and saddles its cast with DOA dialogue full of jokes that don’t crackle or pop, but rather deflate like sad balloons.
Such lack of effort ends up defining the movie. The editing is haphazard, with a choppy and inelegant sense of comic timing (perhaps a surprise considering the Farrelly pedigree; perhaps not when you consider they haven’t made a good movie together in at least two decades). The cast ends up standing around, exchanging words with a weary lack of energy. The film clunks along with stodgy direction and a flat, uninspired visual aesthetic. It’s almost as if the movie was made to be buried and forgotten on a second-tier streaming service. Go figure!
Our Call: SEND IT TO HELL. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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