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Nothing says Christmas like a painfully predictable movie about impossibly attractive people in a ridiculously charming town.
Cheesy holiday rom-coms have become not just tradition, but big business over the last decade, with Hallmark and the big streamers churning out title after title of low-budget festive fare. They’re objectively stupid (a particular favourite of mine is about a woman who falls in love with a sexy Christmas ghost), but there’s a fine line between “so bad it’s good” and “so bad I want to shove a candy cane in my eye”.
Christmas isn’t complete without cheesy holiday rom-coms like Falling for Christmas (which, of course, stars festive queen Lindsay Lohan). Credit: Netflix
This year, I watched a selection of new offerings, along with a few older favourites, to see where they land. Are they a perfect dose of comforting yuletide trash ... or do they have me reaching for the candy canes?
The Princess Switch
You know how it is when you discover your doppelgänger is the princess of a fictional Christmas-obsessed town, so you decide to switch places with them only to fall in love with their fiance? No? Well, Vanessa Hudgens does.
Hot off the heels of 2017’s A Christmas Prince (in which an aspiring journalist falls for the bad-boy prince of an equally Christmas-obsessed town), The Princess Switch (2018) secured Netflix as a cringe Christmas powerhouse. Decorations invade every space, styrofoam snow glistens, fake British accents bemuse, people fall in love in two seconds, and the only true conflict occurs during particularly cutthroat baking competitions.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas
Netflix’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas has all the typical cringe trimmings: heartthrob actors from the ’90s or early 2000s, big city vs small-town tensions, a ripped lumberjack. It follows the soon-to-be-divorced Alicia Silverstone (Clueless) and Oliver Hudson (Dawson’s Creek), who decide to treat their grown children to one last family Christmas. The only hitch is they’ve each brought their new partners along with them. What could go wrong?
Set in the snow-covered town “Winterlight” (clearly filmed for approximately $20 in Canada), I was immediately hooked. I was even more convinced by its knowing, tongue-in-cheek dialogue: “It’s like he grew up in a Yankee Candle” (the movie is both in on the joke and the joke itself).
Alicia Silverstone as Kate and Oliver Hudson as Everett in Netflix’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas.Credit: Marni Grossman/Netflix
But then came its earnest environmentalism. Silverstone’s character can’t shut up about composting and the fate of the planet. As important as these topics are, cheesy Christmas movies (a delicious form of escapism) should exist beyond our reality. The most existential dilemma to hit Winterlight should be a shortage of snow globes, not global climate change.
A Very Jonas Christmas Movie
If a movie makes you feel like you’re losing brain cells while receiving a warm hug, you’ve hit the Christmas jackpot here.
The three famous brothers play exaggerated versions of themselves attempting to get home from London in time for Christmas. Travel chaos, sibling conflict, musical numbers and a Santa played by Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson – in other words, it’s just as fun as it is contrived. The songs are nothing to write home about, but being actual brothers, the Jonas’ chemistry is top-notch. The best Christmas movies are those that can make fun of themselves, and the Jonas Brothers can clearly keep up with the best of them.
Hot Frosty
The creators of this film clearly saw Frosty the Snowman and thought “let’s make that but … hot”.
A widow (played by Hallmark queen Lacey Chabert) inadvertently brings a weirdly hunky snowman to life, ultimately falling in love with him. Dustin Milligan (90210) plays dumb better than most, perfectly pairing a “lost Bambi” persona with his megawatt smile and chiselled abs.
Is it hot in here? Dustin Milligan as Jack Snowman in Hot Frosty.Credit: Netflix
Netflix couldn’t have gone more camp, really hamming up the dialogue (“I was made of snow and now I’m made of ... not snow”) and throwing all laws of physics out the window. It only came out last year, and I’ve already watched it four times.
Jingle Bell Heist
Two people fall in love while plotting to rob a department store owned by a slimy millionaire – all on Christmas Eve. Jingle Bell Heist’s plot is certainly as ludicrous as any cheesy Christmas movie. But unlike most holiday tat, this Netflix film is set in a very real place (London) and concerns people with very real concerns (one needs money to care for her sick mother and the other is trying to get his life together for his young daughter).
In fact, director Michael Fimognari seemed so intent on making this film relatively decent that I sometimes forgot I was watching a Christmas movie (barring the scene where they crash a workplace Santa dress-up party). This won’t work for everyone – fake snow and hollow storylines often trump quality cinematography in Christmas fare – but for those like me, it’ll feel like the best of both worlds.
Tinsel Town
Kiefer Sutherland (24) trades guns for mince pies in Prime Video’s Tinsel Town. A washed-up action star (Sutherland) makes one last-ditch effort to remain relevant by accepting a role in what he thinks is a West End show, but is actually a small-town pantomime. While there, a no-nonsense choreographer (Rebel Wilson) helps him rediscover faith in himself.
As someone who grew up doing school pantos, this film was wonderfully nostalgic. Its unapologetic Britishness imbues it with a sense of self-deprecating humour that isn’t simply tongue-in-cheek, but occasionally genuinely clever. And seeing Sutherland, eyeshadow and all, prancing around dressed as Buttons from Cinderella is a treat to behold.
Joy to the World
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A lifestyle guru is in a bind when she’s pressured into appearing on a Christmas Eve TV special with her perfect family – because said family doesn’t exist – her entire persona is a lie. So, she’s forced to recruit her neighbours and best friend (our Christmas hero, Chad Michael Murray) to pose as her clan. You can guess how well that goes.
I’ll watch any Christmas movie with Murray in it (The Merry Gentlemen, anyone?), but this required serious perseverance. Practically half of the film is a painfully staged snowball fight where perfectly round snowballs magically appear in people’s hands for minutes on end. The other half is just a woman fretting about being a fraud (that’s on you, hun) in a woefully under-decorated house. And I’m sorry, Chad, but your goose art isn’t good.
Champagne Problems
There’s nothing worse than flat champagne. Sadly, that’s precisely what Netflix’s Paris-set romance delivers – a Christmas movie that ticked off the essentials, but escaped my memory as quickly as one could say “joyeux Noël”.
It sees a US marketing executive travel to France to secure a famous champagne house right before Christmas. But she falls for the company owner’s son instead, complicating the acquisition and throwing all her life choices into question.
Cheesy Christmas titles aren’t known for their progressive gender roles, but it still pained me to watch a successful woman give up her high-flying job to work for her new lover (in a wine/book store to boot). The blatant cultural stereotyping was also painful – seriously, not every German person is obsessed with sausages. Above all, the film didn’t even feel Christmassy, clearly attempting to avoid the camp to appear more “authentic”. But hello! Camp is what makes these movies so delightful.
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