The Santa Squad

Watching it was like a gift from Santa. All positive vibes.... with sweet simple story, brought back the old memories.

Throughout my whole Lifetime Christmas film completest quest undertaken namely late 2019 and still ongoing, an interesting quest but very mixed one, there was never the mentality of expecting a classic or the film in question to be flawless. Something that was never managed with Lifetime's output. There was always the expectation of seeing a film where one can see at least some effort rather than merely cash-in level. One could see that with most of Lifetime's output but not all.

Lifetime's 2020 Christmas output was very variable, with not many terrible ones but none properly great at the same time. 'Santa's Squad' left me a bit mixed and is neither one of the best or worst films from the batch. A middling effort if anything. 'Santa's Squad' is another one of those films that leaves one unsure whether to continue or not initially, but on the most part gets better if given a chance and not bailed out on no matter how large the temptation is.

'Santa's Squad' doesn't start off great, it is a slow starter and has some painfully awkward dialogue, a lack of energy and acting that doesn't seem particularly assured or engaged (Aaron Ashmore for example is ill at ease at first). The conflict could have done with more tension and didn't need to try so hard, the conflict in the final quarter or so is on the forced side. The music is too constant, too cheaply recorded and it was like it was scored for something else entirely.

Really did wish that the central relationship featured more in the story, the chemistry is a genuine one but the relationship itself is underused and doesn't get enough time to grow. Not much new is done with a tried and tested formula, so there is a lot of prematurely foreseeable predictability and everything is resolved too neatly and for agreed one of the lamest reasons one can think of.

As said though, 'Santa's Squad' does improve in a lot of areas. The acting on the whole is pretty good, with Rebecca Dalton a warm, charming presence in her role. Ashmore does become more comfortable the more his character grows and his chemistry with Dalton is sweet, just wish there was more of the relationship itself in the story. The children are likeable and have a charming rapport with Dalton.

Visually, it looks nice in particularly the scenery. The film is generally light-hearted, charming and heart-warming once it gets going and the dialogue on the whole is a lot better in the second half, it flows more naturally and isn't as corny while occasionally still forced.

Concluding, not great but watchable. 5/10.

The actors were all wonderful in their own lane but together their chemistry didn't work well which made their acting terrible. It's a christmas movie that does make you feel a little bit warm, but the warmth doesn't succeed as it contains the same story for a lot of movies.

It's a Lifetime movie, so my score is relative (we aren't using The Godfather scale here). The first 3/4 of the movie was pretty decent, the writing wasn't horrible, all actors were actually quite good. It's a cheesy Christmas video with zero budget, but the show was making the most of what they had. That is until the turn. All these movies follow the same general formula; two people, one of who is usually in a bad relationship, find each other, but before the soulmates can be together, some contrived plot device causes one to mistakenly reject the other. In the end, the truth is revealed, and true love wins the day. Usually, it's a conniving ex that causes all the trouble, but here, it's quite possibly the dumbest reason in all of Christmas romance TV history. I won't "spoil" it, but either the original writer, who was fairly competent to this point, went completely off the rails, or the script was hacked and butchered by a person who has never set foot in a kitchen, let alone baked a cookie. And who then decided that the main characters suffered temporary brain damage and completely lost their short term memory. I was half expecting the lead to pull some Polaroids out of her pocket so she could remember what happened two minutes prior.... Anyway, had it not been for that horrendous bit of script, this show might have ranked as one of the better low budget Lifetime efforts. As it is, I'm going with a very painful, 6 out of 10.

Rebecca Dalton shines as Allie, a good-natured teacher laid off due to budget cuts and ended up employed by a wealthy family to decorate their home for Christmas. While there was the obvious potential for the story to go full-on Hallmark after they introduced Allie to Gordon, the overworked single dad (played by the awesome Aaron Ashmore) who neglected his two daughters, there wasn't enough screen time between the two to flesh out their employer-employee relationship, much less anything beyond. Gordon's two daughters, Allie's best friend Tony, Gordon's butler Daniel plus the old couple at the community centre left very little time for any kind of budding Christmas romance.

While the movie adds nothing new to the genre, it was at least warm from start to finish.

The one thing that really bugged me though about this movie was how bad the soundtrack was. While I get that most of these movies don't get enough budget for proper soundtracks, this one sounded cheap and hollow and clashed more than a few times with the pacing and editing, and ruined many pivotal scenes.

I hate to say this but had this movie been a Hallmark production, it would've easily gotten at least 7 stars from me.