Stream It or Skip It: ‘I Believe In Santa’ on Netflix Is the Biggest WTF Holiday Movie of the Season

I Believe in Santa is a new holiday movie on Netflix that will make you examine your idea of Christmas, blur your perception of film genres, and just generally make you question reality. What did I just watch? Am I really here, typing away at my 39th holiday movie review? Or have I been trapped in a reality wherein a 53-year-old man believes in Santa with a fervor that most people reserve for actual religions — and we’re somehow on his side?

I BELIEVE IN SANTA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: I… well, okay… let’s see — uh, so Christina Moore plays Lisa, a single mom and columnist for the website Mile High E-Zine whose work seems to primarily focus on what holidays she likes (July 4th) and dislikes (Christmas). While celebrating July 4th at the local fair, she meets a lawyer named Tom (John Ducey). The two start dating and things go well. They go so well that they’re still together when Christmas rolls around — and that’s when Lisa and her bestie Sharon (Lateefah Holder) make the mistake of wondering when things are gonna go wrong in this seemingly perfect relationship. It turns out that Tom loves Christmas… and Lisa famously hates Christmas, quite often in print.

Lisa and Tom decide to work through this rough spot, which amounts to Tom coming up with a cavalcade of daily Christmas activities designed to force Lisa and her daughter Ella (Violet McGraw) to love the holiday because who doesn’t love Christmas? Things are actually going fine until Tom has to reveal something he’s been nervous about telling Lisa: he believes in Santa Claus.

Like, seriously. He fully believes that there is a burly, immortal being who lives at the North Pole, presumably outside of time as we perceive it, and delivers toys to every good child aged 10 and under — and yes, this belief also extends to elves.

If this sounds like the kind of setup to a goofy holiday romcom, think again! After that reveal, I Believe in Santa becomes a relationship drama and dual character study of two individuals with diametrically opposing beliefs and a meditation on — you guessed it — the power of faith! [airhorn]

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I don’t know — Elf if Buddy hadn’t been raised at the North Pole and was also treated as a serious romantic lead and not a clueless goofball? Or Miracle on 34th Street if it was instead about Doris Walker having a serious relationship with Kris Kringle? Honestly, John Ducey’s performance as a romantic leading man, who is also a lawyer, gives the same mix of mania and menace that Jim Carrey served in The Cable Guy.

Performance Worth Watching: Moore and Ducey — who are married IRL, I’ve learned — are really doing something in this movie. I know they are trying to play a loving couple but their eyes communicate more of a predator and prey vibe. The pair do their best work in a scene where Tom, a man who has been dating Lisa for five months who believes in Santa, chastises Lisa for not raising her daughter as a believer: “I don’t think it’s fair for you to put your lack of faith onto Ella.” Reminder: that’s a line about Santa Claus delivered from one adult to another. Lisa lashes out at him and later makes him go on a sleigh ride alone, which is this movie’s version of packing up the kids and going to her sister’s.

Memorable Dialogue: “You guys ever been flocked?” “It’s not about logic. It’s about magic.” “Christmas: If you’re not on the bus, you’re under it.” “Faith may be the last great universal concept holding the whole world together.” Let me tell you, I was screenshotting and sharing so many lines of dialogue with the other Decider writers that I should’ve created a separate Slack channel for them.

A Holiday Tradition: The list of daily activities that Tom wants Lisa to do — even on weeknights, which is such a level of cruelty that you have to be over 35 to understand — includes decorating the flocked Christmas tree that he puts in her house, going to see a local production of A Christmas Carol, attending a tree lighting ceremony emceed by an a cappella group, going to Santa trivia night where the answers are just puns, baking cookies, and the aforementioned most depressing sleigh ride ever. It’s too much, even for me — a man who is reviewing his 39th Christmas movie of the year.

Two Turtle Doves: The impression that my jaw left on my desk when I learned that this movie shares the same director and writer as this year’s A Hollywood Christmas. Oh — and that writer is Tom himself, John Ducey.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: The title is the only thing about this movie that makes sense.

Our Take: I am still processing what I just watched, which is a movie that has Tom’s friend Assan (Sachin Bhatt) compare his Muslim faith to Tom’s belief in Santa Claus. That seems to be the larger message that I Believe in Santa is going for when it makes a hard pivot towards the serious around 50 minutes in.

The movie was already more puzzling than the puzzles you get for grandma every year. The movie wants — no, it needs us to buy Tom as a serious catch for Lisa in order to justify her staying with him even a millisecond after he says that he believes in Santa Claus. Instead, Tom comes across as a bizarre man-child, like a 10-year-old in a 53-year-old body. The clothes only reinforce this vibe. There’s Tom, wearing a suit vest over a bright red henley, or there he is in a sweater vest with a bright red tie. One’s a look the kid picked out himself and the other is very “mom made me wear a tie.”

Then there’s the last third of the film, which tries really hard to — I don’t know, make adults who believe in Santa Claus into a persecuted minority? Or show us how important faith is via a downhill cardboard sled race? Everything in the final third is so self-serious that it truly boggles the mind. Imagine a movie wherein an affair tears a couple apart, but instead of another woman there’s a Santa. That’s the vibe.

Through all of Tom’s justifications for why he believes in Santa, the movie never reckons with the fact that unlike other religions, the Santa myth should be leaving tangible evidence under millions of trees every single year. Parents all over the world should be flooding Facebook with posts about surprise presents. This drives me crazy in most movies where Santa turns out to be real, but especially one wherein an adult lawyer seriously attempts to explain why Santa is real using logic. I don’t know, y’all — I was screaming at my laptop for Lisa to just leave this man with the conviction of a Maury Povich audience member in 1996.

I really cannot figure out where I stand on I Believe in Santa, because it really does soar on a magical combination of unhinged narrative ambition and bizarrely earnest sentimentality. There are times when the movie hits The Room level of disorienting, where the movie is telling you one thing but unintentionally (?) showing you something completely different. That is a feeling that I personally chase during this time of year, when pop culture is flooded with Christmas movies. To me, real Christmas magic might just be a holiday columnist falling inexplicably in love with a grown man who believes in Santa and owns a lot of vests — but your cardboard sled mileage may vary.

Our Call: SKIP IT because, oh wow is I Believe in Santa not at all the kind of movie it needs to be in order to work. But if you’re like me and love being completely flummoxed by a movie’s choices, then it gets an emphatic STREAM IT .