Dear Santa

A dyslexic boy writes his Christmas list, gets a letter wrong and ends up posting it to Satan instead of Santa. That joke is the whole engine of 'Dear Santa', the comedy Bobby Farrelly directed in 2024 with Jack Black as the devil. Ricky Blitt and Peter Farrelly wrote it, so the brothers behind 'There's Something About Mary' are working together again, and Black is back with them twenty-three years after 'Shallow Hal'.

Liam Turner (Robert Timothy Smith) is eleven, has just moved towns and is not getting on at his new school. Things are worse at home: his parents, Bill (Hayes MacArthur) and Molly (Brianne Howey, Georgia in 'Ginny & Georgia'), are carrying the death of his older brother and a marriage coming apart around them. Liam writes his letter, the typo goes with it, and one night a man turns up in his bedroom who he takes for Father Christmas.

The visitor offers him three wishes and asks in return for something the boy never quite registers: his soul. He spends the first on Emma (Kai Cech), the classmate who won't look at him, and the second on his friend Gibby's teeth (Jaden Carson Baker). Somewhere in all this there's a child psychologist, Dr Finkleman (Keegan-Michael Key), who the parents take the boy to see once they start worrying about his fantasies.

It was shot in and around Atlanta in the spring of 2023, with Decatur Square dressed as an outdoor Christmas market and Inman Middle School standing in for the school; in July the shoot stopped for the actors' strike. Post Malone plays himself at a concert, P.J. Byrne is the English teacher, Kyle Gass, the other half of Tenacious D, teaches science, and Ben Stiller shows up in a part the credits never mention. C. Kim Miles shot it and Rupert Gregson-Williams wrote the music.

It went straight to Paramount+ on 25 November 2024 without seeing a cinema, and it did not go well: 24% positive on Rotten Tomatoes and 34 out of 100 on Metacritic. The complaints landed on the script and on the tone, caught between a crude joke and a film for the whole family, though nearly every review lets Black off. At the 2025 Razzies he was nominated for worst actor, an award Jerry Seinfeld ended up taking. British viewers got it on Paramount+ from 26 November 2024, with a 12 certificate from the BBFC.

• Comedy
• Fantasy
• Christmas