Review: Dashing Through the Snow (Disney+)

By John Corrado

★★½ (out of 4)

‘Tis the season for direct-to-streaming Christmas movies. The latest offering from Disney+ is Dashing Through the Snow, a mildly watchable if overly familiar comedy from director Tim Story (Barbershop, The Blackening) that imagines Santa as a wise-cracking fellow played by comedian Lil Rel Howery.

The film stars Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as Eddie Garrick, a crisis counsellor working with the Atlanta police department who has grown disillusioned with the whole Christmas thing. It all stems from painful childhood memories of the time when he gave a mall Santa his address in hopes that he would grant his wish of getting his parents back together, only for the guy break into his family’s house instead.

Eddie has hit a wall with his own ex-wife Allison (Teyonah Parris), who resented him always having to work on Christmas. When he gets to spend Christmas Eve with his wide-eyed 8-year-old daughter Charlotte (Madison Skye Validum), it’s a chance for father and daughter to reconnect. But their night is upended when Eddie finds a man (Howery) stuck in their neighbour’s chimney, who insists that his name is Nicholas Sinterklaas and that he was just delivering presents, not breaking in.

Eddie mistakes him for a delusional client in need of help, but Charlotte is more convinced that he’s the real Santa. In trying to get Nick the help he needs, they end up on the run from a gang of crooks doing the bidding of a corrupt congressman (Oscar Nuñez). From here, Dashing Through the Snow plays out with a fast-paced tone that never entirely settles into what it wants to be. The stuff with the congressman and his henchman feels undercooked, and the story is generally too predictable to leave much of its own impact.

The screenplay by Scott Rosenberg (the Jumanji sequels, Venom) works in all the expected trappings, from a jaded parent processing the trauma of a disappointing childhood Christmas, to the kid who’s a True Believer, and even some CGI reindeer. It’s not as good as Disney classic The Santa Clause, despite borrowing a few beats, and lacks the more genuine charm of something like Noelle (the first of these holiday movies to hit Disney+ four years ago). The film also feels heavily inspired, shall we say, by Netflix’s superior The Christmas Chronicles.

But Bridges and Howery (essentially playing a version of himself in a Santa suit) do bounce off each other, and are able to have a bit of a buddy comedy dynamic together. This is a film that basically fits into the fine enough for what it is category. It’s a kids Christmas movie, made for families to put on during the holidays. It passes the time with a few amusing moments as we count down the days to Christmas, and that’s about all it was designed to do.