Peter and Bobby Farrelly and Jack Black are throwing it back to the rude ‘90s/’00s style of comedy they originated in movies like “Dumb & Dumber” and “Shallow Hal” (well, maybe not like “Shallow Hal”) for their straight-to-streaming Christmas comedy “Dear Santa.” Paramount+ released a mischievous trailer for the project on Thursday.
In “Dear Santa,” a nice kid (Robert Timothy Smith) tries to send his Christmas wish list to Santa, but due to a spelling error, the list gets delivered to someone else whose name has all the same letters but arranged in a different order. So devilish Jack Black appears to try to corrupt the boy’s soul before Christmas by encouraging him to misbehave. The kid might turn the devil good before that happens, though. They have a lot to learn from each other.
The trailer features bathroom humor, Post Malone, and lots of Jack Black antics of the sort we haven’t seen in this kind of concentrated form in a long, long time. Arched eyebrows, flicking tongue, crazy dancing, that kind of thing.
The cast also includes Keegan-Michael Key, Brianne Howey, Hayes MacArthur, P.J. Byrne, Jaden Carson Baker, and Kai Cech. The film is directed by Bobby Farrelly, with a screenplay by Ricky Blitt & Academy Award winner Peter Farrelly, from a story by Ricky Blitt & Peter Farrelly and Dan Ewen. The film is produced by Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, and Jeremy Kramer.
“Dear Santa” will be released on Nov. 25. It’s Paramount+’s first original holiday movie, and will also be available to buy on VOD, which is an unusual setup for a streaming original but maybe a smart one that, if it’s successful, other smaller streaming services could adopt.
