Parents' Guide to Get Santa

GET SANTA has an entertaining enough premise. The real Santa shows up in town to deliver presents to children around the world, but instead he crashes his sleigh, lands up in jail, and has to win the loyalty of his fellow prisoners while he plans an exit strategy. That strategy is, oddly enough, recruiting the just-out-of-prison father of a young son, who desperately wants to avoid repeating his mistakes. What follows is nothing but opportunities to break the law, all to prove to his son that he's a stand-up guy and Santa is real. A certain age of kid likely will find reindeer who communicate by farting a real gas, and there's a grittiness here that has fun with typical Christmas comedies without pushing it too far out of the family realm. Plus, there are some valiant attempts to soften and reframe the harsh stereotype of prisoner into an unfortunate adult who also was once a kid -- and maybe one who got a bum deal at that.

But there's no real consequences for any of the broken rules and damaged property in the quest to save Santa, and some of the heavier themes here -- divorce, imprisonment, the recidivism rate -- make this more suitable for youngsters able to grasp why dads sometimes go to prison.