{"id":302973,"date":"2025-12-07T09:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T09:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/302973\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T09:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T09:18:12","slug":"my-secret-santa-film-authority-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/302973\/","title":{"rendered":"My Secret Santa – film-authority.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, it\u2019s not really Christmas until Netflix drops an absolute clonker of a Christmas movie, and those of us waiting with our noses pressed up against the window in anticipation of something we can laugh at, not with, can finally breathe easy. Like the big red and white Coca Cola truck arriving on our doorsteps, our perverse wish has come agonisingly true, and in the tradition of A Castle for Christmas<\/a> and last year\u2019s Hot Frosty<\/a>, here comes My Secret Santa as this year\u2019s cinematic talking point. Directed by Michael Rohl, it\u2019s the number one movie on Netflix as I write this, and my socials are positively bulging with people suggesting I review this memorably mad film.<\/p>\n

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The elevator pitch? It\u2019s Tootsie meets Mrs Doubtfire, but with a female Santa; how can you go wrong with that? Virgin River\u2019s Alexandra Breckenridge plays Taylor Jacobson, a single mom who is behind on the rent and needs to make money fast to send her teenage daughter to snowboarding school. When she finds out the extortionate fees are halved if she can get a job at a local resort hotel, Taylor senses opportunity, but there are no jobs to be had; the only vacancy is for a Santa Claus, and Santa has to be a man, right? Fortunately Taylor\u2019s super-gay brother and best pal run a special effects and make-up company, and create a latex Santa fat-suit and mask (based on Kurt Russell in Netflix\u2019s own The Christmas Chronicles movies), and so Taylor manages to get her daughter into the snowboard school with the bonus of having a meaningful job where Taylor can help and inspire people as St Nick. But the hotel owner\u2019s boss Matthew Layne (Ryan Eggold) takes a shine to Taylor, and maybe starts to fall for Santa too; as usual with such deceptions, things come to a crunch at a Christmas party when poor Taylor has to attend, not just as herself, but as Santa at the same time!<\/p>\n

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Alternative title; Hot for Santa; at least My Secret Santa knows it\u2019s silly froth and doesn\u2019t aspire to anything more. But the levels of inanity are still something to behold. Lines like \u2018it\u2019s the silent night of the living dead\u2019 suggest some smarts in Ron Oliver and Carly Smale\u2019s script, but brazen plot-driving scenes like the one where Taylor\u2019s landlord reminds her she\u2019s behind on the rent inform us that no cliche will be left unturned. Taylor\u2019s plan doesn\u2019t make sense in that it\u2019s never clear what paperwork would allow her daughter to get into the elite school; Taylor has to create a fictional pseudonym to be her own father, bizarrely named Hugh Mann. So it\u2019s Hugh Mann, the secret Santa that Layne discovers undressing in a toilet cubicle with a gay man; Gay Toilet Sex Santa might be another apposite title for this film, or even the quotable line; \u2018I just went down the wrong chimney !\u2019<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s some seriously subversive imaging and accidental messaging in My Secret Santa that Salvador Dali might have thought was too weird; a child accidentally causes Santa to rupture at the groin and hemorrhage cascades of beans all over the floor, a gushing geyser of hard grains erupting from between his legs. It\u2019s also a ridiculous plot-point that the hotel has \u2018no time for a background check\u2019 before appointing Taylor\/ Hugh Mann to her post, but since the role of Santa seems to be as a psychological therapist that everyone tells their problems to in this daft movie, it\u2019s hard to understand what the qualification for the job might be. Layne eventually realises that the woman he\u2019s dating and Santa are the same person when he recognises them both using the same chap-stick, and lessons are learned about what a \u2019real mom\u2019 is. This is a fairly terrible movie that absolutely passes the so bad it\u2019s good test; it\u2019s so silly you literally won\u2019t believe what you\u2019re seeing. Netflix have cornered the market in this kind of Hallmark knock-off; has making risible movies like My Secret Santa really given the streamer a spare 72 billion dollars to spend, or is something odd going on here? Anyway, pour yourself an egg nog, put your feet up and get ready to scoff; it\u2019s no secret that My Secret Santa will provide many of us the gift of laughter over the 2025 festive season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every year, it\u2019s not really Christmas until Netflix drops an absolute clonker of a Christmas movie, and those…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[121618,3462,96,2332,29516,2839,115361,121619,392,263,121620,3390,121621,114345,3842,121622,56,54,55,121623],"class_list":{"0":"post-302973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alexandra-breckenridge","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-movie","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-mrs-doubtfire","15":"tag-my-secret-santa","16":"tag-netflix","17":"tag-review","18":"tag-ryan-eggold","19":"tag-santa","20":"tag-ski-resort","21":"tag-snowboarding","22":"tag-streaming","23":"tag-tootsie","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-unitedkingdom","27":"tag-xmas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}