Dear Santa movie review & film summary (2024)

There was a time when Jack Black reuniting with the Farrelly brothers to make a household comedy would have made a number of cultural waves. This isn’t that point. Most individuals in all probability don’t know that Bobby Farrelly’s “Pricey Santa” has been buried on Paramount+, launched on a Monday with virtually no promotion in any respect. Why? The advertising and marketing group in all probability had no concept easy methods to promote a film that appears resolutely made for nobody. Caught someplace between youngsters film and Farrelly grownup comedy, “Pricey Santa” is a film made by individuals who have completely no concept what it is prefer to be in center college in 2024. Not solely do they not perceive 11-year-olds (and I’ve one, so I can converse with a little bit experience), I am unsure they’ve ever even met one.

Co-written by Peter Farrelly and directed by his brother Bobby Farrelly, “Pricey Santa” is the story of a dyslexic sixth grader named Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) who nonetheless believes in Jolly St. Nick and sends him a letter yearly. The dyslexia is necessary (and so cheaply used on this typically exploitative and manipulative dreck) as a result of Liam addresses his letter to “Devil” as an alternative of “Santa” (sure, severely). Guess who responds? A closely bearded and horned Jack Black because the different man in pink, who sorta torments and sorta befriends Liam. One in all many issues with this movie’s unsure tone is that it could’t even work out easy methods to play the Devil/Liam relationship. One would assume a movie a couple of youngster promoting his soul to the satan for 3 needs would have a little bit of a darker edge than a shart joke, however one can be unsuitable.

By and enormous, “Pricey Santa” feels as if somebody took a Diary of a Wimpy Child e-book and added some actually bizarre Satanic mythology. New-in-town Liam has a crush on a lady at college named Emma (Kal Cech) and a brand new pal named Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker). He battles with an obnoxious instructor named Mr. Charles (P.J. Byrne), who Devil will get revenge on by giving him immediate IBS. When Liam’s dad and mom (Brianne Howey & Hayes MacArthur) notice that Liam thinks he is speaking to Devil, they bring about in a baby psychologist (a depressingly wasted Keegan-Michael Key) to resolve the issue. Nonetheless, it is all only a path to a very low-cost piece of manipulative writing about mother and pop grieving the lack of Liam’s brother (that ends on an astonishingly grotesque notice). Do not get me began on the prolonged Submit Malone cameo that is constructed round the concept “Congratulations” is likely one of the finest songs ever written. It is so bizarre.

And but additionally so bland. Practically each scene in “Pricey Santa” has one thing to it that sounds rhythmically off, whether or not it is a clunky joke, a manipulative line of dialogue, or the sense that somebody thinks 11-year-olds are extra like 16-year-olds. It might not appear to be an enormous distinction to individuals with out youngsters however there’s completely nothing plausible about Liam and his group of pals, and it isn’t simply all of them going to a Submit Malone live performance seemingly unaccompanied by adults or the bizarre love triangle that feels far more highschool than center.

The entire unbelievable facets of “Pricey Santa” can be forgivable if it was simply humorous or candy. It is neither. Black is having enjoyable—he at all times does—and there is a late movie cameo that brings in one other Farrelly all-star that is mildly entertaining, however there is not any method that youngsters or the dad and mom who detect this throughout this vacation week have any reminiscence of it by Christmas this 12 months, a lot much less for years to come back.

On Paramount+ now.