‘Secret Santa’ has the gift of originality, but it’s still not so hot
CREDIT TLC with finding a different path into a sentimental Christmas movie. You just wish it were a little smoother. “The Secret Santa” delivers four handkerchiefs’ worth of holiday cheer. It’s got wide-eyed children. It’s got grownups who rediscover the long-dormant Christmas spirit of their youth.
Rather than just laying it right out, though, like a Hallmark or Up flick, TLC frames the story as a mock documentary in which a reporter investigates strange holiday happenings and finds they lead her to realms she never expected.
Everything is shot in familiar TV documentary style. Reporter Kristen, who like all the other actors here is uncredited, talks to the camera about how she got deeper and deeper into this quest.
We see her interviewing witnesses to strange events, and we see the home video “footage” by which the witnesses documented them.
“Secret Santa” also ties into the U.S. Postal Service's long-standing program wherein volunteers answer children's letters to Santa.
So a child in Phoenix wishes for a backyard full of snow and snowmen. It magically happens. A child in Maine wants to see Santa's reindeer, and they appear in her backyard.
Kristen eventually traces a pattern of seemingly impossible wish fulfillment to one Lucas A. Nast, who seems to have been everywhere over a period of many years.
He even has a connection to the “Miracle on 34th Street.” Is he really, gasp, Santa Claus? Nor does the story only involve children. Grownups tell Kristen of near-miraculous things Lucas seemingly arranged. By the end, Kristen's own life is folded into the story.
You can't dislike a heartwarming holiday tale with no bad guys. But the mockumentary framing does slow the story at times, without adding enough new dimension to fully compensate.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com