The New Holiday Film Critique – The Streaming Giant’s Latest Holiday Romantic Comedy Falls Flat.
Without wanting to sound like a holiday cynic, it’s hard not to bemoan the early release of holiday films before Thanksgiving. Even as the weather cools, it seems too soon to fully indulge in the platform’s annual feast of low-cost holiday treats.
Like US candy which don’t include genuine cocoa, the service’s Christmas films are counted on for their brand of badness. They offer rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, modest spending, artificial winter scenes, and absurd premises. In the worst cases, these movies are unmemorable disasters; in the best scenarios, they are forgettable fun.
Champagne Problems, the latest holiday concoction, disappears into the broad center of unremarkable territory. Helmed by the filmmaker, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.
It begins with what looks like a computer-made commercial for supermarket sparkling wine. This commercial is actually the proposal of the main character, played by the actress, to her colleagues at the Roth Group. The protagonist is the stereotypical image of a professional female – overlooked, phone-obsessed, and driven to the harm of her personal life. After her boss sends her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over Christmas, her sibling makes her promise spend an evening in Paris to enjoy life.
Naturally, Paris is the perfect place to pull someone from digital navigation, even when the city is covered in below-grade CGI snow. At a overly quaint bookstore, Sydney meet-cutes with the male lead, who distracts her from her device. As demanded by the genre, she initially resists this ideal guy for silly reasons.
Just as predictable are the film elements that unfold at abrupt quarter turns, mirroring the turning of old sparkling wine in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The twist? Henri is the heir to the estate, hesitant to run it and bitter toward his dad for putting it up for sale. In perhaps the movie’s most salient contribution to the genre, Henri is highly critical of corporate buyouts. The problem? The heroine sincerely believes she’s not dismantling the ancestral business for parts, vying against three stereotypical rivals: a stern Frenchwoman, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The twist? Sydney’s shady colleague the office rival appears without warning. The core? The two leads look yearningly at each other in festive sleepwear, despite a huge divide in economic worldview.
The gift and the curse is that nothing here sticks beyond a short-lived thrill on an unfilled belly. There’s a lack of real absorbent filler – Minka Kelly, still best known for her part in the TV series, delivers a merely adequate portrayal, all sweet surfaces and acts of kindness, almost motherly than romantic lead. Tom Wozniczka provides just the right amount of French charm with mild self-torture and little else. The tricks are unfunny, the romance is inoffensive, and the ending is predictable.
For all its philosophizing on the luxury of champagne, no one is pretending it is anything but a mass market item. The flaws are the very reasons some enjoy it. It’s fair to say a critic’s feelings about the film a minor issue.
- The Holiday Film can be streamed on Netflix.
