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It gets off to a grating start, but this slight comedy eventually finds its feet and delivers a holiday-themed package made up in equal parts of mild laughs and sweet-as-sweet-can-be sentiment. The 18-year-old Jake (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) is already an accomplished operator, running a series of small-time scams at his laid-back California school while giving the cold-shoulder to his family back East. Jake is mad that his father (Gary Cole) remarried only 10 months after the death of Jake's mom, so he's planning to boycott Christmas and steal away to Mexico with his sweetheart, Allie (Jessica Biel). But Allie, nice girl that she is, is going home. So Jake -- swayed by Dad's offer of a vintage Porsche if he's home by 6 pm Christmas Eve -- agrees to make the trip to New York with her. Imagine Allie's fury when he stands her up the following morning. Granted, it's not altogether Jake's fault: He's been kidnapped by a gang of disgruntled customers (something about exam-fixing), dressed in a Santa Claus suit and left in the desert with only an improbably cute vulture for company. Allie accepts a ride East from campus lothario Eddie (Adam LaVorgna), while Jake tries to scam and sweet-talk his way home on time, getting involved along the way with a variety of oddballs dying to believe in Santa's magic. It's silly. It's sentimental. It takes place in some holiday movie never-never land brimming with 5K runs for guys in Santa suits, wacky roadside attractions and ludicrous holiday pageants in which dancing dreidls caper side by side with Kwanzaa maidens. And it's all pretty harmless family entertainment whose charms are probably enhanced if you come to it a fan of young Jonathan Taylor Thomas.