'Santa's Little Helper': A Full Recap of the WWE's Latest Holiday Movie

If WWE Studios is going to produce another holiday movie (the first was 2013’s Christmas Bounty), and USA Network is going to air it the Sunday night before Christmas, then we’re going to take the time to give it a thorough, proper review.

Santa’s Little Helper — which has the courtesy to namedrop the Simpson family dog at one point — is the story of Dax (played by former Real World housemate and WWE champion The Miz), a cold-hearted businessman who is all about being on the “rich list” with zero desire to be on the nice one. We know Dax is a bad dude because he drives a bright muscle car, parks in handicapped spots, and gleefully informs youth centers he’s going to shut them down before they can perform their Christmas play. Oh, and everyone calls him a jerk in the first 10 minutes of the movie. And then there’s his nickname on his parking spot:

On the plus side, he does have some enthusiastic greetings with his coworkers…

…and his boss.

Unfortunately, that finger gun exchange doesn’t save Dax from losing his job, apparently just because someone else at the company said they could handle two jobs instead of just one. So our hero is out the door with two weeks’ severance just before Christmas.

Things continue to spiral from there. Dax’s girlfriend leaves him after a flurry of insults, his car is repossessed, and he’s informed he’s going to be evicted from the giant house he just purchased. Thankfully for Dax, he’s going to get another shot: Santa has taken a shine to him as a potential replacement high in the North Pole organization. The role is the H.O. H.O. H.O., which is, of course, the acronym for Head Office Herald Of Holiday Operations. To vet his candidacy, Santa dispatches kindly elf Billie (AnnaLynne McCord), who is self-conscious due to a genetic defect that causes her ears to be round. Santa entrusts Billie with a bell necklace that seems to have unlimited magical properties.

No one makes fun of Billie about her ears except our villain, Eleanor (former WWE Diva’s champion Paige), whose dad was H.O. H.O. H.O. for two centuries and feels she should succeed him. Paige plays the entitled villain well (she’s British, which only enhances the condescension she displays toward literally everyone else in the movie, including Santa), but whoever was in charge of makeup really did her a disservice with the prosthetic elf ears she’s wearing. I’m hesitant to even call these things prosthetics, as they look like they were found on the bottom shelf of the world’s worst Halloween store. Check it out:

ENHANCE:

Later in the movie, Eleanor wears larger hats to cover them, which is a great adjustment.

Billie knocks on Dax’s soon-to-be-foreclosed door and tells him that her boss is really interested in him as a candidate. Dax, with no legitimate prospects due to his previous company blackballing him all over town, is down. He jumps at the vague opportunity, guessing at various points that the mystery employer could be Donald Trump (a WWE Hall of Famer!), Mark Cuban, or Richard Branson.

The tasks Billie gives Dax to prove his Sugarplum Virtues are extremely random and vaguely, sort of, kind of related to the job. First, she essentially forces him into a bar fight with a bunch of bikers while wearing a funny hat.

Thankfully, the bikers are among the least accurate pugilists in movie history. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Eventually the numbers game catches up to Dax, but with the bikers on the verge of murdering him, Billie freezes time with the all-powerful bell.

Next, she has Dax entertain a snotty child’s birthday party while dressed in a monkey costume, which violates countless health codes because Dax handles quite a bit of food while dressed up. He inevitably starts a giant food fight and is threatened by Eleanor.

Then he has to help some elderly people exercise. At the request of the older women, he does this shirtless.

His final task is threatening some punks to get back an heirloom ring for a guy (spoiler: he’s Santa in disguise with a British accent). This is the gang of tough guys Dax successfully intimidates.

So now that Dax has passed all of his tests and won the heart of Billie, Santa offers him the job of H.O. H.O. H.O. Before doing so, however, he takes Dax back in time to our hero’s teen years, when he spent many a day at the very youth center he wanted to shut down at the beginning of the movie. One of the adults at the center framed Dax for stealing the money needed to put on the Christmas show (this is confusing, because it looks like they had all of the props they needed, but hey, I am not a Christmas pageant expert). Dax was banned from the place he loved and started on the road to the self-centered character we saw at the beginning of the film. Oh, and Santa informs Dax that if he had kept his heart open, he would have become an astronaut. This is him cashing in on the hypothetical endorsement money.

Unfortunately for all involved, Eleanor is an expert in what I guess could be described as the North Pole constitution and uses a previously unknown rule to challenge Dax for the job. How do they resolve this? With the lamest Ninja Warrior-adjacent obstacle course imaginable. At least half of this course is zip-lining, and the other half is the two of them stepping over one another on narrow paths between trees.

The rest of the North Pole watches on some sort of magic flat screen and cheers for Dax, and we get to know more about Mrs. Claus, who comes across as slightly unhinged with an affinity for baked goods that would give Cookie Monster pause. Here are some moments from the race course battle and cheering section.

Wrestlemania-quality action.

Nervous eaters.

Kick. Step. Face-plant.

Dax loses after some cheating by Eleanor and handles it pretty well, declining Santa’s offer for a different position and deciding he’s going to go do some good back in the real world. That good, however, involves borrowing the all-powerful magic bell (which Billie had just left sitting on a table in a heavily trafficked room). He heads back to save the youth center, willing a Corvette into existence and transporting the thief from his childhood from his hideaway in the Cayman Islands. This is how he shows up:

The cops arrest the bad guy without questioning how he just manifested out of thin air, but Dax’s old boss is still ready to tear down the youth center. How is this countered? A good ol’ mass protest… with some of the least enthusiastic protestors you will ever see.

The youth center survives, and through some North Pole bylaw chicanery of his own, Santa disqualifies Eleanor from being H.O. H.O. H.O. basically just because she exhibited poor sportsmanship during the obstacle course competition. Santa ends up giving the coveted position to Billie, with Dax’s real gift ending up being that he was able to find his best self. Oh, and the good guys kiss, overcoming Billie’s round ears.

The basis for this movie was essentially “Let’s put The Miz in another Christmas film and make him interact with many random groups of people while Paige does some quality bad-guying.” It certainly delivers on that goal. But I think it’s going to fall just short of entry into the Christmas canon.