Dashing Through the Snow (2023)

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Remember when made-for-TV movies used to have a stigma about them? Heck, remember made-for-TV movies, period? Well, they’re still around, they just have a new face. The dawn of the streaming service has significantly muddled the once-extant line that separated theatrical movies — even the incompetent ones — from those relegated to network television. Regardless of good or bad, there used to be a definitive quality shift between the two (with some very notable exceptions of course).

However, when Oscar-nominated motion pictures now share the same direct-to-consumer approach as something we would never pay $13 to watch in theaters, it may become even more difficult to figure out what’s worthy of our time.

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Dashing Through the Snow has all the trappings of a made-for-TV movie. It’s released on the Disney+ streaming service, has an unrevised screenplay, and is as inoffensive as a 7pm Friday night premiere. However, the well-known cast, the well-seasoned director, and the relatively high-concept premise suggest this may have been initially intended for a theatrical release.

Tim Story has a career that started in the ‘90s. Mostly known for directing 2002’s Barbershop and the first two theatrical Fantastic Four movies, he’s always had some quality control issues with his films. Lest we forget the ill-fated Jimmy Fallon vehicle (no pun intended), Taxi, or the Ice Cube/Kevin Hart head-scratcher, Ride Along 2. For his latest endeavor, Dashing Through the Snow, Story hits his highs and lows in one fell swoop but luckily benefits from the Christmas movie genre, which has lower standards and an easier time getting us to buy into any silliness.

Chris “Ludacris” Bridges plays Eddie, a Christmas-hating social worker named who’s separated from his wife, Allison (Teyonah Parris), and is watching their young daughter (Madison Skye Validum) on Christmas Eve. As a boy he wrote a letter to Santa Claus in an attempt to help save his own parents’ marriage, but instead got robbed by a mall Santa at his home. Through a series of events that could only occur in a literal movie, adult Eddie runs into the real Santa Claus (Lil Rel Howery), who goes by Nick. However, Eddie is hesitant to believe that Nick is the real deal, naturally.

For any Christmas movie fans, Dashing Through the Snow is surely enjoyable, if not a step up from the annual Hallmark fodder. There are some fun details, such as a family who travels in a high-tech van tracking Santa full-time through NORAD, or a satellite toy factory in New York that turns into a nightclub after hours. And then there’s the obligatory sentiment undergirding the whole thing: Eddie will inevitably regain the Christmas spirit he once had as a child and reconnect with his own daughter in the process. It’s cute and not a deal-breaker by any means.

Of course, it’s difficult to critique an earnest endeavor as a work of high art, especially when its intent is to brighten our own Christmas spirits. But the mishaps of Dashing Through the Snow are typically matters of oversight in storytelling or lazy editing; these issues are more than just plot holes. For instance, there’s this whole Adventures in Babysitting storyboard that feels unexplored, if not neglected. Story’s direction is void of energy in crucial moments, such as in one instance when Nick hides out in a music club and takes the mic to sing “Run Run Rudolph” on stage (an exact sequence pulled from Adventures in Babysitting).

A better movie would have immersed the audience in this scene and made us want to be there ourselves. But rather than letting loose, Story views this moment as a mandatory stepping stone in the plot and nothing more.

As much as Story’s direction lacks a sort of intuition that could have lifted everything much higher than its somewhat ordinary premise, the script, credited to Scott Rosenberg (Jumanji: The Next Level, Gone in 60 Seconds), can’t quite subsidize any theatrical inefficiencies either. These include simple failures to pay off earlier setups, such as creating a sturdier connection between Nick and the disastrous Christmas of Eddie’s youth. It would have been nice to know why Santa never brought the fishing rod that would have ostensibly saved his parents’ marriage. And I, for one, thought that it was going to be revealed that the mall Santa who we thought robbed Eddie’s childhood home on Christmas was actually Nick delivering presents.

In terms of the cast, Lil Rel Howery is the obvious standout, massively altering the gravity of every scene he’s in. This is largely because of Ludacris’ inability to carry a project. The rapper-turned-actor has the charisma and even the talent to be in movies, but lacks the presence to be a leading man. Think of how much more effective every scene would have been had, say, Kevin Hart or Lakeith Stanfield or Winston Duke been in the role of Eddie. It’s never the audience’s job to cast a movie but the decision here should have gone with a proven performer.

Dashing Through the Snow has the building blocks of a good movie but can’t ever become quite as big as the stakes it’s working with: Santa has lost his magic and is at risk of being kidnapped on Christmas Eve. Tim Story’s unambitious direction, coupled with the miscasting of Ludacris in the lead, hold this one back from being an otherwise harmless addition to the endless surge of Christmas movies available to us. Still, it’s relatively harmless and fairly cute as far as holiday movies go, and there are definitely worse options out there.