First Trailer for Dear Santa Is Like a Kidz Bop Bedazzled

Show of hands: Who remembers the 2000 romantic comedy-fantasy Bedazzled, starring Brendan Fraser as a man who ends up receiving a handful of wishes from a sexy devil (a prime Elizabeth Hurley) in exchange for his immortal soul? Well, if you answered yes, then you seemingly have something in common with directorial duo Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, otherwise known (primarily in the 1990s, when they were successful) as the Farrelly Brothers. They also remembered Bedazzled–itself a remake of a 1967 British film of the same name–and apparently revered it enough to steal the idea, a quarter of a century later. Behold: Dear Santa and its first trailer, directed by Bobby Farrelly, which plays like a grade school version of Bedazzled that also manages to cram in a Christmas angle along with the requisite fart and poop jokes.

All that, and it manages to star Minecraft‘s own Jack Black at the seeming nadir of the formerly beloved performer’s popularity, following his dissolution of band Tenacious D in mid-tour after a careless onstage joke about Donald Trump by bandmate Kyle Gass. Black steps into the devilish role that would previously have been Hurley, now offering his life-changing wishes to a young boy with “crappy spelling” abilities who had inadvertently been addressing his Christmas letters to “Satan” rather than “Santa.” It’s a joke that is momentarily amusing in the abstract, and then you see the trailer and realize what 90 minutes of this is actually likely to look like in practice. And brother, it is rough.

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This looks to be a film in the old-fashioned “kid finds a magical, mischievous friend” kind of way, the sort of mini-genre that bloomed after Spielberg’s E.T. and gave us tons of dreck in the mold of Mac and Me or 1989’s kooky Little Monsters. Black is playing the devilish antagonist, but also effectively a Disney-esque genie–he promises to swipe the soul of little Liam (Robert Timothy Smith), but you just know he’ll end up somehow developing a fondness for the kid or even a conscience of some kind by the time this saccharine bundle of farts resolves itself. Co-stars include Brianne Howey, Hayes MacArthur, Post Malone and Keegan-Michael Key, who always deserves better but never seems to pass up these kinds of clunky scripts. Dear Santa is scheduled to crash land on Paramount+ and digital platforms on Nov. 25, 2024. Check out the not-at-all-derivative trailer below.

First Trailer for Dear Santa Is Like a Kidz Bop Bedazzled Filled with Farts