endent Dear Santa (Secret Santa)…with a weak plot, dodgy acting and the worst special effects since a 1970s film, this is one to avoid. Gordon (DL Green in his last acting credit) breaks a promise and neglects his family during Christmas. Stuck selling stolen cars over the holiday period, his wife (Debra Rich) and son (Harrison Myers) leave him to the life he so obviously wants. After being visited by a perky elf (Tena Fanning in her only acting credit), he transforms into one of many 'secret Santas' who help Santa do his job. One kidnapping and a trip to the North Pole later and he's learnt his lesson. You might be forgiven for thinking that this is just some cute, harmless Christmas film; and what's wrong with that, you may ask. I would reply 'nothing', but I would also riddle you this…what's right with it?The opening is slow and dreary, as are the majority of the scenes, and some of the music is more suited to The Notebook. The acting pains, physically pains my every sense; it's so unbelievably bad it's almost comical, but it's mostly just sad. Even those with few lines manage, somehow, to say them in the most unrealistic way possible. The plot is perplexing, the script confusing and unnecessary, and even a talking owl can't save this pariah of a film. The only thing that can save this strange, but disappointing mix of The Santa Clause and A Christmas Carol is Debra Rich, but even her acting is dodgy in the beginning; her best scenes coming 20 minutes in. But don't waste 87 minutes of your life like I did. Take a nap, rob a bank, run naked in a field…anything but watch this film.

Paul Wakefield As a lover of Christmas my wife and I enjoy good Christmas Movies and I am sorry to say that this was far from that description. Like other reviewers I thought it had bad acting, bad script and wonder how films like these ever get passed those who have to Rate them, why this was rated PG for the United Kingdom beats me, surely its time for a Z classification to warn people away from movies like this. Lillith was the only character worth watching and I see that she has never made any other films since, which is a shame as she seemed to be very promising. Do yourself a favour watch Tim Allens Trilogy of Santa Claus Films or Miracle on 34th Street but not this.

dgrove-4 Just because you own a camera doesn't mean you should use it.My wife is a Christmas nut so I've seen my fair share of Christmas movies, this is the first one I've felt compelled to write in about.This movie delivers the cinematic experience you'd expect from bad porn without the porn to make it worth watching. If you're looking for a fun family Christmas experience, you'd be better off taking turns vacuuming the living room.The few hints of potentially fair acting (it's Christmas so I feel compelled to be charitable) were buried by the primarily teleprompter-esquire dialog delivery, speaker-phone quality audio, late 70's sound track, grade school Christmas play effects... Someday I'd like someone to explain the funding behind a movie like this.Go do your taxes, you'll have more fun. This was someone else's write off.

gbarwis This was airing on movies-on-demand under the title of "My Santa, My Dad." Seemed like a fun family film from the description... the only reason I didn't give it only 1 out of 10 is that no movie could ever be as bad as House of the Dead, but this was at least as painful as the Star Wars Holiday Special.This was so terrible that it didn't even have the "so bad it's good" appeal of a Troma film (Toxic Avenger, anybody?), and frankly the Troma films have better production values and acting than this movie. The acting was wretched, the directing abysmal, the lighting, the cinematography, the editing, the score... quite honestly there just isn't anything about this movie to make it worth viewing.Avoid at all costs, unless your only other choice is an Uwe Boll marathon.