This is a David Sedaris joke. It’s a throw-away moment from Sedaris’ premiere essay “SantaLand Diaries” from Holidays on Ice. David Sedaris was almost certainly not the first writer to exploit the Santa/Satan anagram and, let’s face it, it isn’t terribly funny.
And yet, here we are.
Liam Turner (Robert Timothy Smith) seems a decent enough kid. He’s too old to be writing letters to 
Santa, but whatchagonnado? Do you really want to discourage a kid from believing in Santa? The problem is Liam is dyslexic, so when he delivers a wish list for the North Pole, he has actually written, “Dear Satan.”
Next thing you know, Jack Black shows up. Well, that’s certainly the work of Satan, huh? This leads to an interesting idea: One can summon the devil by semantics? … with a typo? That’s good to know, cuz to my way of thinkin’, there ought to be intent behind a summoning. Lord knows God never appears when you want to quench your thirst with a Holy Sprite, huh? But, shoot, apparently all you have to do to summon Satan is cheer at a Duke basketball game.
Never mind.
Jack Black reminds me of neither Satan, nor Santa, tbh. I suppose he’s closer to the latter, but when they dress him in a biker outfit, he looks most like a goth leprechaun. Then the film plays this wussy game in which it pretends like the kid doesn’t understand that he’s summoned Satan so that “Santa” can grant the kid three wishes, you know, like Santa does.
And while Liam is horny for the class hottie, Emma (Kai Cech), that’s the only 
place in his life where he allows for selfishness. And, really, it is just to overcome the awkwardness that oozes from him like the goo on a Nickelodeon show. When you’re making wishes, the one where you desire world peace is not the one that sends you to Hell, donchaknow?
Hence, Dear Santa devolves into a film in which a weak-ass devil does mediocre magic to impress a kid with no evil in his heart. And in doing so, they alienate Liam’s best friend, Gibby (Jaden Carson Baker).
I found it difficult to get behind this film. We like Liam; we like Jack Black. So we don’t really want to see Liam act selfishly and we don’t really want to see Jack Black be diabolical. That leaves very little room for a plot to bloom in between. For a Christmas film about good and evil, I’m not sure any lesson is learned here which means you’ve wasted Jack Black hijinks on a nothing of a script. There might have been a decent idea here, but this particular iteration shouldn’t have been made.
A wish list one nice lister was creatin’
Accidentally gets sent instead to Satan
What desires whet his spice
Only ones where we act nice
I’ve a feelin’ Hell is gonna be a waitin’
Rated PG-13, 107 Minutes
Director: Bobby Farrelly
Writer: Ricky Blitt, Peter Farrelly, Dan Ewen
Genre: Films you will never mistake for Christmas classics
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: I dunno, dyslexics, maybe?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who don’t buy Jack Black as either Santa or Satan
