If you’ve let the auto-play preview of My Secret Santa run on Netflix, congratulations, you’ve basically seen the entire movie. It’s a simple, silly movie that is proof of concept I could have been playing Santa at my family’s Christmas Eve parties all these years. If I had my own F/X team, that is.
Alexandra Breckenridge (Virgin River) and Ryan Eggold (New Amsterdam) star in this mistaken identity comedy about an unemployed single mom who gets a job playing Santa Claus at a nearby ski resort so she can afford to send her daughter to the expensive snowboarding academy the resort hosts. Is that a thing? I’m old, back in my day, skateboarders would strap a board to their feet in the off-season and throw themselves downhill, hoping for the best.
These Christmas movies tend to follow the same beats. So, just like in Champagne Problems, there’s a meet-cute between Breckenridge’s character, Taylor Jacobson, and the son of the ski resort owner, Matthew (Eggold). This time it’s in a record store where Matthew recognizes Taylor from the cover of the one album her teenage garage band released, which this record store still happens to have in stock. She spurns his advances. Don’t worry, she’ll come around.
But first, he needs to hire her as Santa Claus. Although he’s the owner’s son, Matthew butts up against Tia Mowry’s Type-A “Acting General Manager,” Natasha, when he’s tasked to organize the resort’s holiday festivities by his father.
My Secret Santa is not a complicated story. Taylor gets the job, and the rest of the movie follows her as she navigates between her disguise as a man playing Santa Claus and her real life, which includes being romantically pursued by Matthew. He is clueless, of course. The movie’s antagonist is Natasha. She’s mad that Matthew took her job, and she suspects something’s not quite right with the Santa he hired.
This is another movie that would have benefited from a more committed approach to the script’s inherent physical comedy. They give it a better shot than others did this season, with a fun sequence when Taylor and Santa have to be at the same function at the same time. It’s a classic comedy bit. But more so, it’s mitigated by the strength of the cast in this case. I’m not saying anyone in My Secret Santa is going to win awards. But Alexandra Breckenridge has been on Virgin River since 2019, and she won a SAG award for her work on This Is Us in the relatively small, but important role of Kevin’s first love. Breakenridge knows what to do with a simple story like this one. She knows how to be funny and “family-friendly” without playing down to the audience. While the script is, you know, what it is (not much), she is believable and having fun. Which helps us, the audience, have some fun with it along with her.