There’s nothing worse than a great premise wasted on a bad film.

The premise of 2024’s Dear Santa is actually pretty funny. A sixth grader named Liam who suffers from dyslexia mails a letter to Santa, which he mistakenly addresses “Dear Satan” instead. The letter magically makes its way to the fiery place and is received by (ostensibly) the Devil himself (played by Jack Black). When the Devil manifests before the boy, Liam mistakes him for jolly ol’ St. Nick (red suit, pot belly. big beard). Satan offers the young boy three wishes in exchange for his soul, but after admitting that the deal is only sealed after the third wish has been made, Liam realizes he essentially has two free wishes at his disposal. This is a great premise for a film and I’ll bet you could think of a million better ideas than the writers did.

Liam’s parents argue nonstop and a dark family secret is hinted at, but despite this, Liam’s first wish is spent trying to get a girl from his class to “give him a chance,” and the second is to fix his best friend’s teeth. It’s not until the third wish rolls around that the family secret is revealed and Liam’s third wish is to reunite his family, even if that means bringing someone back from the grave. Seems like that one might have come before fixing his friend’s overbite.

This movie is super weird and not in a funny or good way. By the time most of us were in sixth grade we had watched enough movies to know how to see through all those wish loopholes. Instead of carefully crafting wishes that might better his own life and keeping the arrangement a secret, Liam tells his parents that Santa (and later Satan) is visiting him in his room to the point where a child psychologist is brought in and Liam is nearly committed. Ho ho ho!

The tone of this film is more scattered than Santa’s presents. Jack Black plays wacky Jack Black and does all the funny things, but his character is so all over the place that his motivation and decisions make no sense. Why is the devil constantly helping Liam by adding to his wishes and giving him advice? This is a film where every character feels like a pawn, saying and doing whatever needs to happen in order to move the story along. You could pick apart the logic in nearly every scene. In fact it is Black who practically breaks the fourth wall by telling Liam “don’t worry about how the sausage gets made.”

I was never able to put my finger on who the target audience for this film was. It’s too dumb for adults, too silly for teens and, at PG-13, too much for little kids. The movie literally jumps between extended fart scenes and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next references. It’s nice that in a holiday film they tried gifting something for everyone, but at the end of the day there’s very little for anyone.