By Geno McGahee
You ever see the movie FREQUENCY? I loved that movie. I think the filmmakers behind DEAR SECRET SANTA liked it too. It’s not a ripoff, but it has some common threads that I really enjoy. I love films about time travel, except BACK TO THE FUTURE III in the old west. What a shitfest that was.
Jennifer (Tatyana Ali) is a banker in the big city and since this is a Christmas movie, you know that she will be going back to a small town and falling in love with it. I can’t blame them. I love the city, but being there all the time with the homeless bums, graffiti and traffic can really be a drag. Sure, small towns can have guys that are similar to the guys from that movie DELIVERENCE, but the scenery and hospitality cannot be beat, even if they make you squeal like a pig.
Ted (Bill Cobbs), Jennifer’s father, is having some health issues and it prompts her to return home. She walks up to the house and sees smoke inside and panics, but her old dad is OK. She makes the decision to take the house out from under him and send him to an old age home where he could fall victim to groping, beatings and rapes. I’ve seen a lot of 20/20 episodes where they show the people they hire for old age homes. They pay them like 10 bucks an hour and they don’t do sufficient background checks. Poor Ted was going to be thrown into the lion’s den…the groping lion’s den.
Working with her friend, Abby (Jordin Sparks), is a real estate agent and starts pitching the house to prospective buyers and strange things begin to occur. Christmas cards start arriving in the mailbox from a secret santa, professing his love for her. She initially has it narrowed down to two dudes. The cop, Bennett (Benjamin Patterson) and the coffee shop owner, Chris (Elimu Nelson). When she finds Bennett buying a Christmas card, she thinks she’s figured it out, but she soon finds out otherwise. Bennett and Chris are a couple and the minute that they are revealed to Jennifer to be gay, they turn it up. It was odd that the two dudes were really flirting with her at first but the minute that she figures out that they are a couple, they stop it. Maybe they’re bi, or maybe they enjoy teasing chicks. Whatever the case, they threw a curveball.
The cards start coming in and Jennifer decides to write back and it reveals that Jack (Lamorne Morris) an old friend is behind it. The trouble is that Jack died three years earlier and this is impossible, or so it seems. She assumes that somebody is screwing with her, but when Jack starts talking about things that only he would know, it gets harder to dispute. She meets up with author, Linda (Della Reese), about her theories on time travel and worm holes and things of that nature. It helps her Linda informs her that it is possible to time travel in theory and that Jack contacting her could be possible. I think she just wanted to get rid of her. That night, I’m sure Linda laughed about the situation and said “what a fucked up world we live in. You won’t believe the parade of idiots that put down the money to buy my book.”
After telling her dad that she’s lost everything and that she was never close to him, Jennifer heads off to her mother’s grave. Her old preacher, Pastor Avery (Ernie Hudson), shows up to tell her how much her mother loved her. It was good to see Hudson and seeing him hang around a cemetery, I couldn’t help but to think about his GHOSTBUSTERS days and how appropriate it was for him to be at the graveyard. If Jennifer’s mother was planning on getting out of the grave, he could easily get that proton pack and capture her. He is afraid of no ghost.
The encounter brings Jennifer to some realizations and she decides to go back to church, where Avery prompts her to come onto stage and sing for the lord. She does so and the crowd erupts…except her father. Every time the camera turns to Ted, he’s got this very creepy smile on his face. I think the director needed to do a better job here. How did his weird expression pass? Perhaps he was thinking about being groped at the old age home. Who knows? Whatever it was, he didn’t give that warm proud smile that you would expect. Another note about Ted that I want to bring up that I found sort of strange was when Bennett and Chris put their arms around him and offered him some “homemade egg nog.” That sounded perverse to me. That man is too old to get face blasted.
When things start to come together, Jennifer sets out to save Jack’s life and start a life with him. It’s just like FREQUENCY in this way, but Jack didn’t call her “little chief”, which would have been nice. I liked this direction in the film. I was expecting some sappy holiday movie, but the addition of different times coming together was a cool addition and pulled off quite well.
I recommend DEAR SECRET SANTA, even though it doesn’t capture the Christmas feel all that much. It makes up for it in the cool direction of the story and decent acting across the board. It is definitely worth a watch.
Rating: 6/10
