The new Paramount+ holiday feature Dear Santa doesn’t just reunite the Farrelly Brothers, who have been making movies mostly apart for the past decade. It also brings them back together with Jack Black, who starred in their 2001 hit Shallow Hal. That movie arrived during their productive first decade as writer-directors, when they would have a new big-studio, big-star comedy out every couple of years. Dear Santa is the brothers’ thirteenth feature together – Bobby directed it and Peter co-wrote it, but they both produced it, so it seems like a close approximation of their more directly collaborative efforts – and by starring Black it alters an important Farrelly statistic. As of now, the majority of their films star either Jack Black, Jim Carrey, or Ben Stiller. Which prompts the question: Who is the ultimate Farrelly leading man?

Now, there are some good Farrelly pictures without any of the aforementioned trio. Stuck on You, with Matt Damon and Greg Kinner playing conjoined twins, is charming, if not exactly laugh-out-loud funny. Kingpin, for which they tried to get Chris Farley but wound up with Randy Quaid and Woody Harrelson, is one of their best. And perhaps the filmmakers’ most impressive feat of all time was making an appealing and enjoyable movie starring proven non-movie-star Jimmy Fallon, with the baseball-fandom rom-com Fever Pitch. But most of their biggest hits – their top five, in fact – feature Black, Carrey, or Stiller. (Weirdly, there’s one movie that brought Black, Carrey, and Stiller on a single project, and it’s not a Farrelly joint. The Cable Guy has Carrey in pure-mania mode, Stiller directing with an eye toward satire, and Black playing Stiller’s slightly wild-eyed friend. It also has a bit part for Owen Wilson, who co-starred in the Farrelly movie Hall Pass.)

**cue the Farrelly Fanfare**

THE VERDICT: Maybe that’s why Jim Carrey works so well in the Farrelly world: He puts the struggle between nice-guy hero and crude deviant right there on the surface. It’s most evident and literalized in the self-versus-self battle between pushover and domineering creep in Me, Myself and Irene but it’s there in Dumb and Dumber, too: Think of the famous fantasy shot where he embraces Lauren Holly, the woman he harbors a largely puppyish crush on, only to peer over her shoulder and peak up her skirt. That’s really the Farrelly trademark; as much as they’re known for mixing together gross-out humor and genuine heart, more often they’re actually letting both of those elements jostle together, even if that means their movies must find their own, sometimes discordant key. Black and Stiller both have versions of the ability to embody both lower instincts (greed, avarice, pride, arrogance) and higher ones (friendliness, empathy, attempting to do the right thing). It’s Carrey, though, who can turn those contradictions into a self-made battle royale.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.