I Believe In Santa [2022]

This movie was coconuts. It was mentioned to me by my friend Caroline who heard about it through her own means and asked if I knew about it being a bad movie person. All the information she gave beforehand amounted to, "It's a romantic comedy movie about a guy who genuinely believes that Santa is real." She also mentioned an article about the 22 most unhinged things in the film that I also recommend reading but only after you've experienced the film for yourself. And you should. Because it must be seen to be believed.

Our main character is Lisa, a crazy-eyed, Rachel Hollis knockoff, who writes about holidays or something for some online publisher and has an eight-year-old daughter and sir-not-appearing-in-this-film ex. After writing an article toting July 4th as "the best holiday, god bless America" she meets our other main, Tom, at a fair. Tom, wearing too many vests and looking like a 20-years-older, knockoff Ben Platt, is apparently the perfect man in spite of that fact that he really doesn't feel straight even when juxtaposed with his actually gay friend, Assan. However, the red flags appear when Lisa goes to his apartment for Christmas to find it decorated to the nines, creepy automation Santa included. Lisa hates Christmas because of honestly dumb childhood trauma reasons that she reveals at the start of act three so this isn't good. Either way, she decides to go with it and has a lot of eye-bugging performances of Christmas activities, which he has scheduled every single day. Then the other shoe drops: he genuinely believes in Santa. This is made even weirder in that this is dropped during a dinner party with their best friends and everyone particularly felt for Lisa's friend, Sharon, who really hopes he's kidding. But he triples down on this. Instead of losing all attraction to him and breaking up with him, Sharon does suggest Lisa stay with him for the story, which honestly I get. Somehow though, this turns into Lisa just accepting this eccentricity and deciding the answer to to meet him halfway, which really just means giving in. It ends in a ski lodge proposal and a "I asked mall Santa for you two to get married" from the daughter. 

The overall premise of this movie is obviously the strangest thing. We immediately wondered if Santa is just an allegory for God, and it feels like that could be the case. However, the movie also really clearly showcases all the reasons one shouldn't believe in god with seemingly no awareness. Also, as Adam pointed out, if you actually believed these things about Santa, wouldn't he just become your god? There's also the detail of "god bless America" in the beginning, and this other strange moment where Lisa and Assan hang out and Assan mentions that he's Muslim and draws some kind of parallel between his friend's insane beliefs and racism. By the way, this movie was written by the (white) guy playing Tom and the woman playing Lisa is his wife in real life, and he has written other rom-coms. 

Aside from that, this movie is full of other awkward, strangely shot, and strangely acted moments. We got almost as many laughs as we got slack-jawed moments. It's definitely worth a watch at Christmas. Or hell, any time really. Santa is an omniscient presence after all, and it's best we all bow down before his altar.

Spoon Rating: 5