My Secret Santa Parent Guide

Taylor (Alexandra Breckenridge) has been in survival mode ever since her 15-year-old daughter, Zoey (Madison MacIsaac) was born, forcing her to drop out of college and give up her dream of being a rock star. Already struggling to make ends meet, Taylor learns she’s been laid off from her job only days before Christmas and must come up with both her rent money and her daughters’ snowboarding class fees, and fast.

Jobs are hard to find this close to the holidays; the only one open is as a Santa for the local ski resort. Luckily, Taylor’s brother (William Vaughan) is a special effects makeup artist, and he agrees to help her transform into the jolly old elf. Being Santa isn’t easy, especially when she needs to hide your growing attraction to the resort owner’s son, Matthew (Ryan Eggold), who has a crush on Taylor and a budding friendship with Santa.

As a connoisseur of campy holiday flicks, I enjoy a film that leans into being ridiculous and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The romantic comedy is a genre replete with clichés, predictability, ridiculous premises, and heartwarming romance, and that’s exactly what My Secret Santa delivers. People don’t watch these movies because they want something challenging or groundbreaking; they just want the cinematic equivalent of a warm, festive hug. I laughed, I gasped, I swooned. What more could a girl ask for?

The lead performances are both outstanding, and their chemistry is off the charts. Sometimes this genre falls into the error of casting people based only on looks, not skill, but luckily Breckenridge and Eggold have both going for them. The script is fully aware of how silly it is, but the writers also added a good amount of heart, which stops the film from veering too far into screwball territory.

My Secret Santa is not a movie for everyone. It’s incredibly campy and clichéd, which could be off-putting for some viewers. For genre fans, however, this is a fun entry into the catalog of seemingly unending rom-coms being pumped out of streaming studios in recent years. Fans of clean romances will also be happy to see an almost total lack of negative content, aside from some uses of terms of deity and adult social drinking. I can honestly say I finished my viewing feeling a little more festive than I went into it, and that is a small Christmas miracle.

About author

Savannah Sillito

Savannah Sillito is a librarian with a master's in library science, a bachelor's degree in English, and a certificate in early childhood education. She enjoys nonfiction books, travel, and is a staunch proponent of the Oxford comma.