Dear Santa review – Jack Black plays Satan in mediocre Christmas comedy

There’s a smart little “what if” at the centre of this season’s umpteenth Christmas comedy Dear Santa: what if a kid wrote a letter to Santa but accidentally put down Satan’s name instead? It’s a spelling error, made by an awkward 11-year-old with dyslexia, that leads to a surprise festive visit from the wrong man in red, chaos inevitably ensuing.

But, as one has come to expect from other recent films based on neat, easily pitched loglines, the question is far more interesting than the answer. Because the film, directed by one-time co-bro of studio comedy Bobby Farrelly and co-written by sibling Peter, isn’t able to find the punchline to its joke, a great idea that makes for a sub-par movie.

Related: The Merry Gentlemen review – more forgettable festive filler from Netflix

It’s a feeling of underwhelm that’s clearly been felt behind the scenes too. Despite boasting the Farrelly brothers and Jack Black as lead, the film has been quietly dumped on Paramount+ with minimal-to-no promotion and a lack of screeners provided to press before its pre-Thanksgiving release. Even if the film had been a winner, a theatrical release would have been unlikely anyway (despite the subgenre’s streaming uptick, this month’s Red One marked the first Christmas movie from a major studio to get a theatrical release since 2018) but it’s still telling that we knew more about Lacey Chabert’s snowman-with-abs romance than we did about a reunion for the star and director of Shallow Hal.

Part of the problem here is a tonal confusion. The setup is one that insists a level of darkness that Peter Farrelly and co-writer Ricky Blitt aren’t able to smartly regulate. We’re trapped between a sweet-natured kids movie full of life lessons about family and acceptance and a black-hearted adult comedy about a devil trying to steal the soul of a pre-teen. Unsurprisingly, and less interestingly, the former wins out.

Black has increasingly found more financial success sticking to comedies aimed at a younger crowd with his roles in the Jumanji series, The Super Mario Bros Movie, unending Kung Fu Panda sequels and next year’s Minecraft film. As Satan, one might hope for something a little edgier given, you know, Satan, but this is just more of the same, his brand of cartoonish mania turning the Prince of Darkness into a lovable scamp. After the unexpected letter, he attaches himself to Liam (newcomer Robert Timothy Smith) and grants him three wishes, after which he will take his soul. The script takes them from trying to impress a girl a school to an indulgently long sequence at a Post Malone concert, complete with a shrug of a cameo.

There’s no clear idea of the best way to really use the character of Satan, even with him being in almost every scene, and so his devilish tricks either involve, sigh, more Post Malone or, sigh, giving someone the runs. There’s just nothing all that inventive despite the broad rule-free canvas.

Slightly more interesting is what happens to Liam’s parents, who grow increasingly disturbed by their son’s new obsession with the devil, something they see as a dangerous delusion that drives them to seek help from a therapist, played by Keegan Michael-Key. But their fractured relationship soon coerces the film into familiar festive territory as Liam ultimately wants Satan’s help to get them to avoid a divorce. It leads to an awkward lurch into straight-faced seriousness involving grief over a dead brother, a level of emotional investment that’s hard for us to take in a film that is itself more invested in jokes about diarrhea.

For something closer to a paycheque than a passion project, Black’s energy is admirably high, if a little exhaustingly so. His panto antics would perhaps appeal more to a younger audience even if his pop culture references might not (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, kids?). A final twist, and a final thankless cameo, provide the film with an easy out to its soul-snatching set-up while a final, poorly explained scene goes so hard on candy cane saccharine that it leaves our teeth feeling a little loose. Dear Santa is like watching Bad Santa slowly turn into Elf, an unsatisfying attempt to be both naughty and nice, ending up as nothing instead.

• Dear Santa is now available on Paramount+