Talk about a demon child! Where did they get that living doll little brother?! That haircut! That beauty mark – which I guarantee has ‘666’ etched into it if you look closely!
Were it made in the 80s or even 90s, Dear Santa would likely have been a mean little delight with wicked, un-PC humor and a bit of heart to temper the barrage of sadistic acts carried out by a misfit moppet and his demonic pal. With shrieking, bug-eyed supporting turns, toothless, safe direction, and a general, non-threatening goofiness common for kid films, DS is like the tempting devil’s food cake treats you’ll find on the end cap of the bread aisle. Sure, the pic on the box looks scrumptious with that dark, decadent chocolate encasing an ooey gooey center, but what you get is a dry, processed husk containing barely a pimple pop of creamy goodness.
Black quite organically became a kids movie mainstay and why not? His rotund frame and high energy persona was what drew young audiences to him in the first place. He’s fine here and clearly the bright spot, but his mugging and mildly offensive language do little to rev the engine of this overlong, atonal blob of cliched, smooshed fruitcake. Making the young protagonist a pathological liar might’ve worked if this movie had a naughty bone in its stale body, but a running “joke” about cancer flails every time. Robert Timothy Smith at least comes off somewhat natural as a real kid, but Farrelly can’t seem to get much more than reactionary competence out of his young cast and most scenes involving children only are flat and lack spark. Few set pieces stand out, save a concert sequence where Smith busts out some surprisingly sick moves alongside the actual Post Malone, who’s pretty amusing when he sycophantically fawns over Smith.
The plot is stunningly old school. Bickering parents, a mean boyfriend who fully believes in the geek/jock hierarchy of middle school, and a snide teacher played by the always welcome and clearly improvising P.J. Byrne. The most egregious and offensive element is a subplot about Smith’s dead brother. Delving into such dark territory isn’t so much unearned for a fluffy, nonsense movie as it is shamelessly manipulative. My wife even asked if she’d missed something when the parents began discussing the dead child since the shift is jarring and clumsy. Even the title is a cop-out. Doing zero research, you KNOW what the original title was and should be, but they wimped out there too.
Were the rest of the film brimming with zesty, chaotic energy and laughs, switching gears into dramatics might work. Instead, it ends up as cloying, unconvincing tripe perpetrated by a filmmaker who appears to be ashamed of his early work and can’t wait to spoonfeed sugary junk to the masses. Is it unwatchable? No, but it serves little purpose other than background noise while you watch YouTube videos on proper gift wrapping. I liked this alot better when it was called Satan's Little Helper.
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