Dear Santa Review – IGN

It’s a surefire premise that’s perhaps best suited to a Tales from the Crypt Christmas special: A good-natured sixth-grader named Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) writes a letter to Santa Claus, but he accidentally addresses it to “Satan.” dutifully materializes into a real demon, willing to get Liam what he wants for the very small price of his soul. Maybe this idea could have worked as a Tenacious D music video, especially with master actor Jack Black playing the devil himself. But Black also has a lucrative side business in kid-friendly entertainment (or is that his main business these days?), so Dear Santa is indeed a family film — albeit salty enough to be directed by the Farrelly brothers. With their signature mix of youthful and kind-hearted, they should have been well-suited to creating a children’s crowd-pleaser, but while their signature mix of rudeness and sweetness remains, “Dear Santa” falls far short of their own comedy highlights, and can’t even muster up the kid crowd-pleaser it could have been.

At least it’s nice to see that the Farrellys (Bobby – the one who not Create Green Book; Decide for yourself if that makes him less respectable or if he directs more, while Peter co-writes with sitcom veteran Ricky Blitt) and maintains their loving interest in the outcast and disabled. Liam, whose dyslexia is the cause of a misprint in his Santa letter, has problems at home as his parents Bill (Hayes MacArthur) and Molly (Brianne Howey) argue incessantly. However, the Farrellys aren’t particularly adept at portraying the nuances of a fractured family; Some attempts at familial pathos ultimately require far more suspension of disbelief than the supernatural stuff. For example, when Molly assures Bill that he’s a great father, both she and the script seem downright delusional; He always seems dismissive, condescending and downright cruel towards his little son.

Liam’s school life is only marginally better, as he and his only friend Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker) live on the fringes of the popular kids. He ultimately decides to accept Satan’s offer of three wishes (the spirits stole the idea from him, he claims), at least in part: if he uses only two of the three wishes, he argues, the devil can never claim his soul. This uninspired idea for his first wish involves taking his crush to a Post Malone concert and going on stage with the enchanted singer. Even for a film steeped in the terrifying forces of hell, there’s a lot of Post Malone in “Dear Santa” — and he definitely didn’t make a deal with the devil to hone his acting skills.

For a while, “Dear Santa” is a typically late, mixed offering from the Farrellys. It’s endearing, but fraught with an overcomplicated story that takes a while to unfold its core, and you’re more comfortable with visual gags than verbal ones. Black, for his part, is able to infuse his lines with enough enthusiastic individuality (“Sorry, I can’t discuss that, it’s under liti-gaysh”) to wring laughs from them, just as Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller buoy others have given Farrelly films. But “Dear Santa” really falters when it decides to largely neglect its easiest part: examining how a middle school student could be corrupted by dealing with a demon, no matter how fun-loving and Jack Black-y that character is. Liam’s temptation is part of the story, but it’s almost an afterthought, as if it’s somehow excessive for a child who lies about his friend’s cancer to completely come to terms with Satan.

Even more misguided are a few new storylines that undermine the original premise on multiple levels rather than provide additional escalation. (Even a cameo from a former Farrelly and Black collaborator garners no more than a few sparse laughs.) In an apparent attempt to induce tears of joy, “Dear Santa” finds a solution to such a shockingly tone-deaf misappropriation of the holiday spirit portrays that it almost sounds like a satire, as if the filmmakers were mischievously upping the ante on children’s stories about reversing divorce and suppressing sadness goes. For all of Dear Santa’s talk of demons and hell, the ending feels more subtly evil than anything else in the film.