Christmas movies are a dime a dozen — especially when the Holiday season is just around the corner. The priorities of these movies are pretty straightforward. They are either about the togetherness that the season brings for families – a good narrative would use this aspect to either bring estranged ones together or dysfunctional ones closer. Subsequently, there are those movies that take the holiday spirit head-on, and push the viewers, and humans in general, to be at least a little bit kinder to each other. And then there are some that use the ‘saving Christmas’ narrative; the big-ol-grinch trying to mess things up followed up by a redemption of sorts.
“Mr. Santa: A Christmas Extravaganza” wants to be all of them at once. It follows three teenage high schoolers – AJ (Fey Soetan), Logan (Emmet Smith), and Keyara (Shanel Cheatham) who represent the geeks of the grade. The three have been best friends and the only ones in the school who have shown interest in the cultural shows that their English teacher – the now heavily pregnant Mrs. Mackey (Wakeema Hollis) helps them organize each year. These shows are mostly about celebrating the Christmas spirit that no one really comes down to watch – except maybe the folks of the three kids.
This year turns out to be a little different. Since the class also comprises the popular girls – Sasha (Khail Bryant), Mickey (Sophie Tananbaum), Charlene (Sydney Morgan Currie), and Julia (Chelsea London Lloyd) who often bring the three of them down for no reason whatsoever, Mrs. Mackey – who is already high on hormones, asks the entire class, including the IT girls to work together with AJ, Logan, and Keyara to put up the show. Reluctant to put their ego aside, the decision causes major chaos, especially when Mrs. Mackey has to leave midway for her forced sabbatical. Now, with no one around to teach them English, or anyone to help them put up the show, the kids are flustered. That is until Mr. Santa (Geoffrey Owens) himself shows up.
Now, this is not your traditional Christmas movie. Director Noel Calloway, who has also co-written the screenplay with his daughter Kellen Calloway has devised a narrative that moves only slightly away from the cliche of Christmas movies. Unlike other films where Santa only feels like a mythical entity, this one opts for a more direct approach where Santa – not only makes a guest appearance but also plays along with the narrative. Veteran actor Geoffrey Owens who is charming as ever makes things nice and cheery whenever he is on. Additionally, Calloway implies a fourth-wall-breaking approach where his three main characters often opt to tell you their side of the story directly. This allows some of the movie’s odd character work to feel unique.
That said, nothing else works here. The plot progression is so poorly conceived that you sometimes feel that the entire thing was released even before the post-production could be complete. There are jarring differences in approach throughout the film where some of it feels like a proper movie and some, like an amateurishly put-together television pilot that ran into budgetary constraints last minute. It also doesn’t help that every single acting performance here is pretty mediocre. AJ does feel like a great POV to the story and the writing allows the three main characters to have some sense of interpersonal conflict that could exist beyond the sad vacuum of the movie’s universe. However, the mean girls feel like stick figures who aren’t given enough girth to make their actions feel real or worth following. This doesn’t just make “Mr. Santa: A Christmas Extravaganza” incredibly hard to sit through but also makes its messaging, which was all over the place to begin with – feel oblique. In the lure of making a movie about saving Christmas, Noel Calloway is unable to save his film itself.
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