My biggest frustration with Netflix this time of year is that, despite
all of its many categories and sub-categories, there is no adequate way
to bring up a list of holiday films, which are pretty much all I want to
watch from mid-November through the end of the year. That means that I
end up putting a lot of dubious stuff in my queue just because the title
happens to contain an especially Christmassy keyword. That was the case
with Dear Santa.
When it arrived, I couldn’t even tell
whether the movie was live-action or animated; given the total lack of
actors’ names in the description, I suspected the latter. As it turns
out, however, none of the names were listed because none of them is
anyone I have ever heard of. Only one member of the cast even has a
photo up on IMDb, and most of them have only a couple of other film
credits. After watching this, it’s easy to see why.
Dear Santa
is helmed by Peter Stewart, a prolific director with a dozen
pseudonyms, perhaps because he’s hoping to hide his identity from
potential viewers. If this holiday flick is any indication of the
quality of a typical Stewart film, I can’t imagine too many people
seeking out a second movie with his name attached. The list of titles
alone makes me skeptical about his ability to choose worthwhile
projects; something tells me Bikini Girls from the Lost Planet and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds
didn’t pick up much Oscar buzz. By contrast, screenwriter Hamilton
Underwood has only one other movie to his credit: the abysmal-looking My Ghost Dog.
Picture, if you will, a workaholic father with an idealistic son who
still believes in Santa Claus. Suddenly, Dad finds himself putting on
weight and growing facial hair with startling rapidity. He’s fallen into
an overwhelming task - being Santa. Sound familiar? This movie came out
in 1998, when The Santa Clause was still fresh enough in
everyone’s mind that I doubt anybody could miss the blatant
similarities. The movie also borrows liberally from A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, only serving to remind viewers how much better those movies were.
D. L. Green is Gordon, a seedy car salesman who has promised his family
a snowy retreat for Christmas. Little does he realize that his boss,
Mr. Ambrose (Robert Quarry), intends for him to stick around and compete
with another dealer for a big promotion. Vacation’s off, and while he
tries to brainstorm new ways of pushing shoddy cars onto unsuspecting
customers, he experiences the effects of his son Teddy’s (Harrison
Myers) letter to Santa asking for something to help his dad recapture
the Christmas spirit. That something, Santa (Bennett Curland) decides,
is to make him one of his special helpers. So no, he isn’t completely
replacing the big guy himself, but the effect on his life is much the
same.
Guiding Gordon through his Christmas nightmare is
Lillith (!), a street-smart, five-foot-something elf (probably because
the budget didn’t allow for the effects to make her seem pint-sized).
Tena Fanning plays this wise-cracking sidekick, while young Ariana
McClain is Morgan, Teddy’s schoolyard confidante. Other characters
include Kirk (Richard Gabai), Gordon’s long-suffering assistant, and
Mrs. Sanders (Edrie Warner), the kindly operator of a center for
disenfranchised children. Of all the human cast members, her performance
comes the closest to being tolerable; she’s the only actor in the bunch
I’ve seen elsewhere, and her rather hokey showing here seems primarily
due to shoddy writing. Quarry is an over-the-top, stereotypical mob
boss, but at least he is mildly entertaining, and Gabai ekes out a laugh
now and again. But the only participant without a hint of cheesiness
is, in a brief, uncredited appearance, Teddy’s cat.
IMDb won’t
tell me how old Myers is, but he seems to act at least a couple of
years younger than he looks. This appears to be on the cusp of
adolescence, but he still believes in Santa wholeheartedly, and he
spends his afternoons on makeshift skis, hitting the bedroom slopes in a
flurry of paper snow. There’s a whiny, needy quality to this lad that
grates on me, though most of the adults are much more annoying. That
certainly applies to Fanning as Lillith, who is forever scolding Gordon
and usually peppering him with what she believes are witticisms rather
than the cringe-worthy puns we know them to be.
And even she
isn’t as obnoxious as Green, who comes across as the poor man’s Ben
Affleck, smirking his way through every scene - or is that a grimace as
he tries to choke down the unpalatable dialogue? Worst of all is Debra
Rich as Gordon’s wife Carla. Early in the movie, she subjects us to the
most outrageous display of hammy overacting I’ve ever seen - though, to
be fair, I doubt anyone could have avoided looking at least a little
silly when uttering the laughable lines Underwood penned. The cherry on
top of this unfortunate sundae is the execrable special effects, which
include a sleigh that makes its journey sans reindeer, simply zapping in
and out of the space-time continuum, which almost seems to eliminate
the need for a sleigh at all. Oh, and the several-minutes-long flashback
just before the end of the movie recapping the film thus far, just in
case somebody fell asleep and missed most of the critical plot points
(which, come to think of it, is a pretty plausible scenario).
I’m not in the business of bashing movies. It’s in my nature to be
charitable, especially to a family-friendly film, and a Christmas movie
to boot. But I simply can’t think of any reason to recommend this movie,
unless you’re an aspiring filmmaker who could use a boost of
confidence. My brother made much better movies than this in high school.
I suspect most middle-schoolers with a video camera could as well. In
other words... Dear Santa, this movie stinks.
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