Cert – 12, Run-time – 1 hour 43 minutes, Director – Bobby Farrelly
When sixth grader Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) accidentally sends his letter to Santa to Satan the devil (Jack Black) appears to him, granting him three wishes instead of the gifts on his list.
Over the past few years the separate and joint ventures of the Farrelly brothers have often felt stylistically better suited to another time. Even narrative beats feel as if they’re from the early-mid 2000’s rather than from the last decade or so. While some of these (Peter Farrelly’s Best Picture winning Green Book) have turned out slightly better than others (brother Bobby’s uneasy sports comedy Champions) elements of another time have largely been present. This continues with festive comedy Dear Santa; directed by Bobby and co-written by Peter with Ricky Blitt, where the film’s events are spawned by the fact that sixth grader Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) has dyslexia, and therefore addresses his letter to Santa to Satan.
The devil himself (Jack Black) appears that night in Liam’s room and says that while he can’t get him the items on his list he can grant three wishes – claiming that genie’s stole this idea from him. However, when the third wish is asked for Liam’s soul belongs to Satan. Therefore, the process is dragged out as Christmas nears as Liam hesitates over his wishes.
However, his niceness, and at times anxiety, sometimes gets in the way as he both wants to help his best friend Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker) get rid of his overbite and stop his mum (Brianne Howey) and dad (Hayes MacArthur) constantly feuding, and be able to go on a date with his school crush, Emma (Kai Cech). As the attempted comedy tries to come through with Satan tries to get Liam to make his wishes, showing off his magical powers in whichever way causes chaos in the moment, or simply causes a teacher to suddenly develop explosive diarrhoea, there are increasing references to the past of Liam’s family and why they had to move to their current home in the first place. The dramatic edges may come out more as the run-time moves on but it remains consistently uneven and heavy handed. The film spends little time properly discussing things and only hinting so that when the past tragedy is finally addressed it feels forceful and improperly dealt with, especially in the final stages which take a strongly disagreeable turn.
As a whole there are some really oddly played with beats throughout. Liam tells his parents, and others around him, that Gibby has cancer so that he can avoid introducing them. While briefly mentioned such elements crop up a number of times and disturb the rest of the film which could play out as a serviceable, if forgettable, comedy. Instead, these outdated, lazy ideas bring about a lazy feeling to the film as a whole. It begins to feel overall tired, we’ve certainly seen a good deal of its elements done before, and is largely saved by a couple of light chuckles scattered throughout thanks to Black channelling some of his School Of Rock and Tenacious D energy, watered down by the script and surrounding details.
With a number of outdated jokes and ideas Dear Santa feels assembled with very familiar elements from other festive comedies, only raising a couple of chuckles over the course of a tired run-time.
Just A Little Bit Random 