Dear Santa

Dear Santa / 2011 / made-for-tv movie There's more emotion in this photo than in the entire movie. This movie is a treat - it perfectly exemplifies the genre with its delicate teetering between holiday cheer and full-blown psychopathy.  Let's get right into the gristle. Crystal, a rich, wide-eyed ingenue, discovers a young girl's letter to Santa - in lieu of presents, the girl asks Santa to find a new wife for her widowed father.  Her interest piqued, Crystal drives to the return address written on the letter and begins stalking the family.  The driveway stake-out segues to Crystal tailing the widowed father, Derek - a low-rent Ben Affleck with the the girthy face and hazy eyes of a codeine-addicted retired athlete - to the up-beat soup kitchen where he serves double duty as manager and volunteer (eking out some time away from his snowplowing business).  Fish-out-of-water antics ensue, for upper-crust Crystal has never been around the downtrodden and down-and-out - or apparently any other humans, we might infer.  Aside from the constant assertion that she is, indeed, wealthy, neither her wardrobe nor her mannerisms can back this up - an alternate reading could easily situate her as one of the soup-kitchen patrons with a loose grip on reality, a playful imagination, and a stroke of luck squatting in a Christmas vacationer's metropolitan high-rise.   Stereotypes abound - from Derek's frigid fun-hating girlfriend (whom the 7 year old neglects to mention in her letter to Santa), to the affable homeless folk with their toothy grins and kind eyes - but none are as unsettling and frankly befuddling as the flamboyantly gay soup kitchen chef, Pete.  Making his way through the film in a stream of over-the-top outfits (including an iconic fuchsia chef's hat and coat), it's as if the costume design was outsourced to a group of homophobic 4th graders.  In Kansas.  In 1996.  But praise the inevitable glaciers of change, and kudos to the creators and their ilk, this most recent cadre of "family-oriented" north-of-the-border production companies, for acculturating middle-aged middle-Americans to the sexual realities of our modern times by peppering these flicks with big-hearted florists and hairdressers portrayed by a revolving cast of heterosexual Canadians.  Either way, with Crystal's lasers set on Derek and his daughter, Pete proves to be a willing ally in the ambitious Crystal's mission to insert herself into the still-healing family. Endlessly bemused by her surroundings and in a constant state of awe, Crystal vies for Derek's attention with her naive demeanor while grumpy girlfriend Jillian tries to defend her encroached upon territory.  Derek, a relic of erstwhile blue-collar morality, is considering proposing to Jillian, thus solidifying their loveless relationship for the sake of his daughter.  But his recently awoken desires get the best of him and he quickly, some might say dickishly, pushes aside the long-suffering Jillian in favor of the wealthier, more youthful, and more attractive Crystal.  In standard Dickensian fashion, some vague financial threat hovers over the soup kitchen, and (shockingly) Derek's snowplowing business isn't exactly raking in the money - but a hefty check from Crystal's family coffers saves the day. To say that Derek doesn't need a grouchy girlfriend for the plot to move forward or to add depth to his (or any other) character in the film is a wild understatement.  His being in a relationship is completely counterproductive to whatever slight bit of sympathy he could have otherwise mustered, and it casts a dark shadow over Crystal's intentions (a scene in which he entrusts Crystal to watch his daughter, alone in his house, shows her snooping about, picking up and staring at a photo of Derek and the recently deceased wife, hungrily looking at the snapshot of happier times the way a well-connected intern eyes up a supervisor's desk).  A broken family, two women competing to swoop in and play mama-bird to the damaged-goods alpha-male.  Crystal, shamelessly pursuing a taken man while steadfastly maintaining an air of innocence, her wide, black, wet eyes a broiling sea of don't-cross-me-bitch.   At times, it loses itself as a Lifetime Christmas movie and plays out more like a Lifetime regular movie.  We are a cat-fight and a Craig's List murder-for-hire subplot away from a Movie-of-the-Week.  Derek walking around like a spellbound Prince Eric doesn't help the situation - he seems genuinely exhausted by life, and more than happy to hand over the reins to any woman present.  And in Crystal we have a new kind of measure to stack our mother figures up against - unsullied by hard work, unscarred by childbirth (those gamine hips), unhardened by the daily grind of school drop-offs and soccer pick-ups, her energy and enthusiasm, the unabashed joy she finds in the trivial aspects of motherhood (she's ecstatic about emptying a can of beans into a pan on the stove) make her the perfect magnet for any man stuck with a worry-filled wife with a history of life's stresses etched across her face.  These movies are usually geared toward women, but this one - dead wife (guilt-free marriage-ender, in NY Times crossword parlance), followed by a super-rich hottie so enamored that she's willing to drive away an almost-fiancé - seems to have a distinctly male fantasy at its core.  Merry Christmas. NSM - Non-Santa Movie MCM - Mild Christmas Mysticism GCS - Gratuitous Community Service CDEM - Capitalist Deus Ex Machina DW/M - Dead Wife / Mother Season's tweetings, - Jon Bobby Elf