It’s not often that a feel-good Christmas movie could easily double as a harrowing true crime tale, with only a slight tweak to the plot. Yet that’s where we are with the Lifetime “It’s A Wonderful Lifetime” film Santa Bootcamp.
On paper, the plot doesn’t sound that harrowing. Emily Strauss (Emily Kinney), an event planner, gets the opportunity of a lifetime (or at least of her career) when she’s hired by a mall magnate (Patrick Cassidy) to stage a Christmas Gala for his investors. With little time – and desperate to find the perfect Santa – she visits a Santa Bootcamp to get a recommendation from its hard-nosed drill instructor, Belle (Rita Moreno). Instead, Belle puts Emily through the bootcamp to teach her about the magic of Christmas.
On its face, it sounds innocent enough. An alternate synopsis might be, “Emily goes to Belle for help finding the perfect Santa. Instead of reasonably offering her assistance, Belle forcibly enlists her into bootcamp and tortures her in an experiment to see how far she can push Emily before she calls the police.”
Of course, it’s not unusual to have a Christmas movie about a character who needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into embracing the holiday spirit. A Christmas Carol is undoubtedly the most famous example. What makes Santa Bootcamp a bit unusual is that Emily really doesn’t seem like the type of Scrooge-like character these stories usually feature. She’s less “bah, humbug” than “I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I’m determined to get this done.”
When Emily first meets Belle, she might be a bit harried, but she’s not rude. She’s far from surly or irritable. In fact, she’s fairly polite and even complimentary – although perhaps her compliments don’t come off as entirely sincere. Still, she seems perfectly nice. There’s absolutely nothing about her that screams “this woman needs to be subjected to rudeness and insults to truly appreciate the Christmas spirit.”
And yet that’s exactly what happens. Instead of a movie about a Scrooge-like character getting some well-earned comeuppance, we get to see a film about a group of people deciding to be total jerks to a fairly nice, ambitious woman for no good reason. Even a little kid, who randomly decides to declare her a “scary troll.” I mean, what the hell? You’re way too big not to recognize an elf when you see one, kid.
With only a few tweaks, Santa Bootcamp could easily be adapted into a psychological torture horror film.
It’s thankfully not that kind of movie. And as feel-good Christmas movies go, it still manages to hit all the beats one would expect. She gets inspired to throw a better party than she’d originally planned. She gets the man of her dreams, who gives up his own job opportunity to stay with her. And she even gets the wish that never came true when she was a child: a white Christmas.
All in all, Santa Bootcamp is a decent film. But I can’t help but think there’s a much darker movie under the surface. And not even that far under the surface, at that.
What did you think of Santa Bootcamp? Share with us in the comments below!