Directed by José Sierra and starring Ana Serradilla, Olivia Duflos, David Chocarro in lead roles, this Christmas family movie, Santa mi amor, wherein a mother and her boyfriend will go to any lengths to give her daughter a magical Christmas that she will remember forever. The movie has a runtime of 98 minutes.
– The Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
We all agree that lying to people about anything doesn’t go a long way, and when the illusion shatters, things just tend to get worse. Single mother Lucia apparently can’t have a real conversation with her daughter Leo, who is sort of a traumatised brat with no self-preservation. Lucia is also the same and has unfair expectations from everyone, especially her poor boyfriend Sergio, who is a kind and understanding man stretched too thin. The Santa idea is when he should’ve made a run for the hills or at least not agreed to the insanity, but love makes you do weird things, I guess.
Either way, what bugs me about these Christmas movies about families and love, with children in the mix, is that it’s the kids who are hyper-mature and running around trying to fix their mother’s insecurities and traumas. It’s normal to watch kids be kids and throw a fit when they don’t get to eat candy. But it’s weird when a 5-year-old runs around trying to fix her mother’s relationship up.
It’s also a little derogatory to watch this nice man, who has gone above and beyond to accommodate his girlfriend’s weird hangups, get told off like all of her lies are his fault. You want there to be some issues in the story and a hurdle that everyone needs to get over in order to find that happy ending, but my god, it’s frustrating to watch him getting the short end of the stick for some toxic and non-existent reason or another. And, yes, I know Christmas movies are supposed to be a little kooky and just for laughs, but I refuse to take toxicity as a way to introduce forced conflict or gags.
There are also some wild moments that are rather unbelievable, and the conflict at the end conveniently gets solved too early for any real consequences. The movie, thus, feels like it doesn’t take the issues too seriously and just wants to rush towards a happy ending with a big bow on top.
Other than that, this Christmas movie stars two gorgeous people falling in love at Christmas. There’s not much happening other than a lot of deception and lying, but the sets look really festive and cute, and it’s nice to watch it. It’ll make you want to travel to some quaint town and celebrate Christmas with your loved ones and do some shopping. The music is fine as well, but nothing that sticks out much. Performances from all three of the actors are also believable, and the leads look nice together.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t really much of a happy ending to this weird Christmas movie where the protagonist is rather toxic, and the child is too mature for her age. Either way, if you need something to watch in the background, this is the one to go for. It’s sometimes cute, and it looks great, so it’s not all bad.
Dating Santa is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
The little girl, Leo, is a Brat and too controlling of her mother, she has no boundaries, the mother doesn’t help by lying to little Leo, and not telling her that she has a boyfriend, but instead makes up a story about him being Santa Clause.