'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."

'Borderlands' Bombs with the Critics

         On August 9, 2024, Lionsgate released 'Borderlands', which is the highly anticipated film adaption of the video game franchise of the same name. Unfortunately, the wait may have been for naught as the film has received predominantly negative reviews, holding rotten at 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, alongside a Critics Consensus that reads, "Glitching out in every department, Borderlands is balderdash." In the film a bounty hunter returning to her home planet for a mission reluctantly creates a team in order to save the universe. The ensemble cast includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, Florian Munteanu, and Edgar Ramírez. But what did the critics say?

        Donald Clarke of Irish Times notes, "Console junkies will find themselves involuntarily hammering an imagined X button in the hope of getting back to the gameplay. No good. You’re stuck with this wacko BS." Adding, "When Blanchett actually says “I’m getting too old for this shit” it doesn’t play like a gag at the expense of all the superannuated action stars who have said it before her. Unfortunately, the longer the thing goes on the less it ceases to be good honest rubbish and the more it expects us to care about the stupid, stupid plot."

        Carla Hay of Culture Mix says, "Borderlands" should be called Bored and Bland to describe this slipshod movie adaptation of the video game. It's just a mishmash of mindless action scenes, annoying characters, and shameless ripoffs of Star Wars and Mad Max movies."

       Tatiana Hullender of Screen Rant was more impressed, stating, "Borderlands rushes through too many plot points for its own good, but it's saved by its likable cast and willingness to lean into video game moments." Continuing, "In a recent interview with Screen Rant, Jamie Lee Curtis explained that Cate Blanchett was the number one reason she agreed to be in Borderlands, and the proof is in the final product. From her opening narration to the final sequence of triumph, Blanchett commands the screen and demands my respect and attention. There have been instances where a respected actor can turn out to be too good for the popcorn movie they're in, accidentally weighing down the work instead of elevating it, but that is far from being the case here."

       Benjamin Lee of Guardian writes, "Blanchett, outfitted in sparkly gear and a swoop of bright red hair, deserves credit for not shrinking from a task so far beneath her." Adding, "With its juvenile humor, fast pace and shaky handle on grownup feelings, Borderlands winds up resembling nothing so much as a children’s film that’s too violent for children to actually watch. It’s not the severity of the violence so much as the aesthetic drabness; strange, really, that gorehound Roth bungles a few horror-tinged sequences into a hail of machine-gun fire. (Blame the PG-13 if you must, but CG blood wouldn’t improve matters.) If the recent Dune movies are self-serious Star Wars, and Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon series are bozo-level Dune, then Borderlands is Rebel Moon dumbed further down until it hits a dead end. There can be something freeing about a shameless genre ripoff, whether game-based or not; just look at Resident Evil, Pitch Black or The Fast and the Furious. (Maybe Vin Diesel is the secret sauce.) Borderlands doesn’t seem to quite realize that there’s an art to the steal."

Photo by Felipe Bustillo on Unsplash