Dear Santa is one of those movies that is about a good 15-25 years overdue. And it represents everything that is wrong with the movies made by Peter and/or Bobby Farrelly – they’re always too longer than they should be. At an hour and 43 minutes with credits, this movie would’ve been cut by 20 minutes by any other filmmaker.
Bobby directs his second movie solo after last year’s Champions, which you’ve probably already forgotten about already too. He’s mainly been away from filmmaking following the death of his son, Jesse, from an accidental drug overdose in the winter of 2012. He reunited with Peter on Dumb and Dumber To but stayed away for the rest of the decade as Peter went on to make the Oscar-winning (but very controversial) Green Book.
But it’s obvious that both of their heydays are long gone. Peter’s follow-up was the very disappointing The Greatest Beer Run Ever with Zac Efron and Russell Crowe. It dropped on Apple-Plus without little fanfare. Peter is listed as one of the writers and producers on Dear Santa but something tells me this was a script that has been sitting around in a drawer since the early 2000s that they couldn’t get made mostly because the studio backers demanded many changes.
Filmed in the Atlanta area, where it may be set because there are references to Emory Hospital, it involves an 11-year-old sixth grade student Liam Turner (Robert Timothy Smith) who is the newest student at a middle school. He only has one friend, Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker), who has an outrageous big buck teeth. Oh, Liam also suffers from dyslexia.
I’m not sure if these are supposed to be serious or meant as a joke. I’m not even sure the filmmakers know. I feel like they were going for something like when they did There’s Something About Mary or Shallow Hal. But Liam’s dyslexia is barely an issue. It’s only there for him to write a letter to Satan instead of Santa. Yeah, it’s terrible.
And the letter goes to Hell where it’s found by Jack Black’s character saying he’s Satan. (I’ll ruin it for you. He’s not. He’s like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life trying to be a demon. Ben Stiller in a funny uncredited role is the real Lucifer.) Anyway, Liam thinks the immortal is Santa who promises him three wishes until Gibby notices the letter was addressed to Satan.
There’s also a subplot of Liam wanting to date a girl in his class, Emma (Kai Cech). There’s another one of Liam’s parents, Molly (Brianne Howey) and Bill (Hayes MacArthur), dealing with the death of their other son, Spencer (Leo Easton Kelly), who died recently when he was struck by a car trying to cross the street. Molly and Bill seem to be having some problems that aren’t really handled well. However, I did like a scene between them when Bill says he feels guilty as he was playing golf at the time but Molly tells him not to because he needs that time with his friends.
It’s rare to see a scene like this in one of these movies. Usually parents are expected to be no more than five feet from their kids at all times. If they go play golf or do anything social with their friends, it’s viewed as something bad.
Unfortunately the rest of the movie is horrible. Black does what he can with the role. But I feel he’s being restricted by the PG-13 rating. But he does have some good quips but they’re mostly about feces, which is probably for the rating. And that’s the problem. This is an R-rated movie that has been whittled down to a PG-13 movie, yet it tries to be a PG rated movie.
However, it’s too serious and mature for younger children and too childish and pedestrian for mature audiences. It totally takes the idea of a family suffering from grief and loss at the holiday season and shits all over it. Liam is totally oblivious to the tension between his parents who resort to mostly goofy characters once they suspect that Liam has turned to devil worship in the worst way. This leads to a thankless role by Keegan-Michael Key as a psychiatrist who probably read the script and said, “Fuck it as long as the paycheck clears.”
Since Bobby has dealt with the death of a son, I found it very patronizing that Liam wants Spencer to be alive again and at the end, he is on Christmas morning. The first Christmas after you lose a sibling, child, parent, close friend, spouse/partner is the hardest. And this movie tiptoes around the subject that you think it will be handled in the final act. Instead we get a total cop out that is a total cheat to the audience.
Considering that neither Smith nor Baker can act even to deliver one line of dialogue, the whole movie is just awful and their conversations as friends don’t seem the very least believable.
It’s no wonder this movie was dumped on Paramount-Plus on a Monday the week of Thanksgiving with very little marketing. At one time, studios at least had to release a movie in one theater for one week to fulfill a contractual obligation. They obviously didn’t give a fuck and just dumped it on a streaming service. Hopefully for Black, the paycheck cleared as well.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 