Well this was a bizarre watch. 'Dear Santa' (2011) is a bit of an enigma, mainly because it is a made for TV, Hallmark-esque, Christmas film which isn't absolutely horrible to sit through. But it also manages to have a main character who is very, very likeable despite clearly being an absolute psychopath. It shouldn't make sense, but here we are. This also doesn't mean the film is actually very good I should add. But my expectations were in the toilet and it did manage to exceed them by a decent amount. The film follows Crystal Carruthers (Amy Acker), a young socialite living a life of luxury with the help of her rich parents. However, her parents decide to give her until christmas to sort her life out before they cut her off. In a twist of fate (or a complete coincidence) Crystal finds a little girls, Olivia (Emma Duke), letter to Santa asking for a new wife for his dad. Crystal sees this as her opportunity to turn her life around and so she finds the family in question and makes herself apart of her life by volunteering at the soup kitchen that Olivia's dad, Derek Gowen (David Haydn-Jones), runs. She soon finds out that Derek is seeing a woman named Jillian (Gina Holden) and her and Olivia plan to get in between Jillian and Derek so that he can fall for Crystal instead before christmas.
Okay, so from that synopsis can you see what I mean by our main character being a little psychopathic? Well guess what, that is not even the half of it. Crystal is a genuine stalker in this film. There is a whole montage sequence where she follows Derek and Olivia around for a day, staring at them through windows and all that jazz. It is played up as a fun sequence, with a cheery soundtrack being played throughout despite the criminal behaviour that is going on. This stalkerish behaviour is called out a couple of times in the film, mostly by Jillian he seems to be the only character with her head on her shoulders, but it is also encouraged withe people continuously saying 'oh no its not weird that you're following this family because you found that letter. It's fate, keep doing what you're doing'. This is a problem with the script of course, and the script does have several problems. FIlmmaking wise the film is cookie cutter. Its not bad, its not great, its fine. The script is not terrible dialogue wise, but when it comes to characters it seems to have things backwards. We've already touched on the stalker that is our hero, but Jillian is also shown as the villain of the film despite the writing being contradictory to this. Jillian isn't written as likeable and, to be fair, the script succeeds in this. She has no sense of humour and doesn't seem to get on with people very well, but she is villainised for this pretty harshly. She has genuine and correct concerns about Crystal, but this is shown as her being jealous. But she is right. And this is where the script fails. They have the actions of the protagonist and antagonist completely backwards and its only really through the performances of the two actors that the distinction can be made.
In my introduction to this review I mentioned that this film made a psychopath very likeable, and this is because of the performance of Amy Acker as Crystal. Yes, the character is awful and should definitely not be propped up as the hero of the film. But Acker works with the very little positive traits the character has and puts in a very likeable performance. The character is a little ditsy and not very street smart and she pulls this off well, but she is also just super charming throughout the film. The more I think about it, her performance is absolute perfect for a psychopath. Gina Holden's performance is also good for the needs of the film. Although her character does not posses villainous traits, Holden still manages to make you dislike her through the performance so you have to say she did a good job. As for David Haydn-Jones and Emma Duke, as Derek and Olivia respectively, they both do decent jobs. Duke has a couple of line readings which are not the best, but for a child actor she is definitely not the worst I have seen. Haydn-Jones also does fine playing Derek, although the character is your standard busy Dad who struggles to fin time for his daughter. But regardless of how cliched and standard th character is you still need someone to play them and Haydn-Jones does a fine job.
This film is not good. It is pretty basic TV christmas film fare so you know what you're getting before you start. However, it is no way near as terrible as I was expecting it to be. I never found myself bored or absolutely hating my time, but I also didn't find myself enjoying myself, hence why I felt the film is an enigma. As for filmmaking it is extremely bog standard. The script is not terrible but it does do a pretty bad job of giving characters actions to match their personality and place in the story. Performance wise it is pretty solid. Would I recommend it? Its hard to say. Probably not. But it is short and it isn't boring so maybe if you're looking for something new to watch I guess. But there are so many better christmas films out there, just watch one of them.