Movie Thoughts: Mission Santa: Yoyo to the Rescue (2025)

• Released: November 6th, 2025
• Directed by: Ricard Cussó, Damjan Mitrevski
• Running time: 1h 31min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A hopeful elf and his disdainful manager team up to look for Santa when a hacker threatens to ruin Christmas for everyone.

My Thoughts

Okay, here's to this year's Christmas-themed review. I ended up seeing this movie on a whim because I still have like ten free movie theater tickets left that I need to use before next year August. This didn't look particularly good to me, but also not terrible.

And yeah, that's a good way to describe the movie. It's inoffensive and not great, but I found myself surprisingly kinda liking it. I had a semi-good time with this. Even the stuff that annoyed me only annoyed me mildly, so I guess there's something of value to be found here.

The characters are decent enough. Yoyo is kinda generic, but he's also not annoying (thankfully) like I feared he might be when I saw the trailer. He's definitely jolly and positive and full of the Christmas spirit, but he's also just a likable guy and when you learn his backstory it totally makes sense for him to be this way. And he never overstays his welcome, like I said. Coco is also a solid deuteragonist and while she can be a tad grating at first (we get it, she's serious and no-nonsense and organized), once she starts to warm up to Yoyo she becomes a pretty likable character as well. I also like how it's heavily implied that she's a lesbian, which is something I haven't seen in a lot of children's Christmas movies. 

The story was simple enough but I also like how it somewhat kept me guessing and I couldn't predict exactly how things were going to go from a mile away like I can with a lot of family films. 

The animation was also surprisingly decent. I was expecting this to be a lower-budget production looking at the pretty goofy poster, but honestly this film looks really nice. 

The comedy is one of these things I thought was just a biiit grating, but it wasn't too bad. There is some gross-out humor in here, but it's kept to a minimum and the other jokes are just standard kid's stuff. A bit annoying at times, but nothing terribly offensive or anything. 

If there is one thing that did annoy me though, it's that the main reindeer (Cookie) is basically a dog. Which wouldn't be an issue if it was established that in this universe, reindeer are basically dogs. But Cookie is literally the only reindeer who acts like this. The other reindeer act just normal. So not sure why Cookie barks and wags his tail and pants like a dog. 

I also kinda dislike how the movie has this quiet moment between Yoyo and Coco where Yoyo explains the Christmas spirit to her, telling her that Christmas isn't about gifts, but it's about family and being together and being good to each other and such. 

Which is a nice thought. Or would be, it weren't for the fact that the entire movie keeps hammering home the fact that Christmas would be ruined if the kids didn't get their gifts. So which is it? Is Christmas about the Christmas spirit, or is it about getting gifts? Choose a lane and stick to it because right now it feels like this poetic moment Yoyo and Coco are having is completely meaningless because Christmas is about saving the gifts. The whole point of the movie is stopping a villain who is destroying the gifts and putting children on the naughty list. If this movie was truly about just the Christmas spirit like Yoyo implies, those gifts should be meaningless and Christmas would continue regardless of them. I don't know, I don't like how it goes on and on about the Christmas spirit, but then in the end still has it be all about materialism.

This movie also has a surprising amount of death in it, with two characters burning to death in a building and one character dying of cancer. I don't know, that just felt unexpected to me. I'm not super used to seeing this much death in a children's Christmas movie.

Overall, like I said, this is a fine film. It's fun and inoffensive for children and even has a few good aspects, and even adults like myself can somewhat enjoy this one. I wouldn't outright recommend it or anything, because in the end it's nothing special, but not bad either.