'Dear Santa' Deserves a Lump of Coal

         On November 25, 2024, Paramount+ released 'Dear Santa', which quickly established itself as one of the biggest disappointments of the year with a score of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. In the film, "a young boy mails his Christmas wish list to Santa with one crucial spelling error, a devilish Jack Black arrives to wreak havoc on the holidays. From the hilarious minds behind DUMB & DUMBER, Christmas is about to go up in flames." The ensemble cast includes Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Post Malone, Hayes MacArthur, and Brianne Howey. But what did the critics say? 

        Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter says, "It should hardly come as a revelation that Black’s hardworking comedic efforts are the film’s saving grace." Adding, "Adopting a deep growl that makes him sound like late-period Jack Nicholson, the actor is clearly having a ball with his colorful role, and the fun proves infectious. He makes the many bad jokes bearable and the decent ones even funnier with his typically manic, perfectly timed delivery. And to be fair, there are a few decent ones in the screenplay co-written by Peter Farrelly and Ricky Blitt (Family Guy, Loudermilk), even if it inevitably includes bathroom humor in the form of Satan casting a gastrointestinal distress spell on Liam’s obnoxious English teacher (P.J. Byrne). “Every time a grown man sharts himself, a demon earns its horns,” a smug Satan informs Liam. There are several funny pop culture references that should please adults while befuddling the target audience, including a reference to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Satan announcing that he’s staying at the “Redrum Motor Lodge.”

        Matthew Jackson of AV Club notes, "If Christmas movies can’t be good, they can usually at least be pleasant distractions. Dear Santa is neither. It’s a regrettable film, one that wasn’t ever worth the wordplay that started it." Continuing, "Farrelly and Blitt’s script, which feels like someone chopped it up and remixed it at least once somewhere along the way, meanders between wild adventure (like a drawn-out concert sequence that lets Liam shine in front of his crush) and utter, unspeakable darkness (like the tragedy that recently befell Liam’s family). It pushes into edgier, more traditional Farrelly brothers territory just for a moment, then pulls back into cutesy, stilted family fun the next. One moment encapsulates that seesaw tone perfectly: Satan offers a substitute for a swear word because, for some reason, he decides he shouldn’t cuss around a kid, then just a few sentences later decides to swear anyway. Dear Santa is a movie at war with itself, constantly pushing and pulling between two or more contrasting vibes, never finding a balance and, worse, never feeling like it ever cared about a balance."

Photo by Brian Suh on Unsplash

        Jesse Hassenger of IGN Movies writes, "It’s a surefire premise perhaps best-suited to a Tales from the Crypt holiday special: A sweet-natured sixth-grader named Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) writes a letter to Santa, only he accidentally addresses it to “Satan” – and thus dutifully materializes a genuine demon, ready to get Liam whatever he wants for the low, low cost of his soul. Maybe this idea could’ve worked as a Tenacious D music video, especially with master showman Jack Black playing the Devil himself. But Black also has a lucrative side hustle in kid-friendly entertainment (or is it his main deal, these days?), so Dear Santa is, in fact, a family movie – albeit one salty enough to be made by the Farrelly brothers. Their trademark mix of the juvenile and the good-hearted should’ve made them well-suited to crafting a kiddie crowd pleaser, but while their trademark crude-and-sweet mixture remains, Dear Santa falls well short of their own comedy high-watermarks, and can’t even muster the kiddie crowd-pleaser that might have been." Adding, "Dear Santa takes its seemingly irresistible premise – a sweetly earnest middle-schooler asking for Santa Claus but getting a resplendent demon played by Jack Black – and never does better than toy with it. Rather than follow in the vein of classic Farrelly Brothers comic showcases like Harry and Lloyd getting dressed up fancy in Dumb & Dumber or a tiny dog attacking Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary, the movie settles for some incidental chuckles based largely on Black’s charismatic enthusiasm. When the filmmakers decide to tug more insistently at the heartstrings, this would-be holiday classic goes from middling to deeply misguided."