It's not easy for little Liam to celebrate Christmas when his parents are noisy downstairs, especially after the family tries to recover from a painful family tragedy. Things don't get complicated for the poor boy when his letter to Santa accidentally falls into the clutches of Lucifer himself, and Liam's soul is suddenly at stake when the satanic Jack Black tries to appeal to Liam's most selfish desires …
The premise of a dyslexic child who misspells “Santa Claus” and writes a letter to Satan is funny on paper. It probably would have worked very well as a short sketch. But as a feature film? Then it's exactly what you'd expect: a tortuously slow, drawn-out torment that doesn't elicit a single laugh. It's artificial. Terribly repetitive. It feels like the film never ends, as if Satan himself has punished the viewer with an eternally long reel of garbage. The setup leaves no room for timing when it comes to the lines and, at the same time, too much room for extended dialogue scenes that could have easily been cut.
The characters are constantly explaining things to each other, as if they're stuck in a loop, and the dialogue is written and performed so unnaturally that you wonder if the script wasn't written by an artificial intelligence. Even when the film introduces some new twists (after an hour and 30 minutes), the film fails to engage and the ending is simply disgustingly contrived. That's how crude, sugarcoated and artificial this Christmas tale is. As if there weren't enough of them in the sticky climate of American Christmas movies. Dear Santa belongs in that category of filler that you're better off scrolling through for something more sensible to watch on a streaming service.
This was certainly not the year of Jack Black. The comedian does his best to give the film some sort of edge, but it's not even Black who provides the film's very few moments that might raise a smile. Black feels tired and awkward here as a horned-up villain, more or less like a bumbling version of Beetlejuice. I'm not even going to get into Post Malone's stiff childish acting and very long cameo, but that probably doesn't need to be said. Despite some funny jokes, there are no laughs here.
Advertisement:
If you still have the mind of a child, the film's fart humor can certainly entertain a little, but I find it hard to see how 12-year-olds – the film's target audience – will be able to get through this when there are so many alternatives more attractive and fun. The adults in the family will struggle even more with the film's humorless desperation. In other words, it's not a film for anyone except perhaps Jack Black himself. We're used to low-quality films at Christmas time, but Red One might just have some competition for the worst (Christmas) film of the year…
