Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Netflix (Marni Grossman, Mika Cotellon, Rob Baker Ashton, Diyah Pera)
Something has happened to Netflix’s Christmas movies this year. Historically, they’ve unfolded like lucid dreams one might have when waking up from general anesthesia in an Arizona strip mall. They’re like Twin Peaks for people who have been locked out of their Facebook for too many incorrect password attempts. Their plots make little to no sense, they’re lit like a Soviet prison, their characters speak to one another like they’ve been bonked on the head by falling pianos. They’re almost always about journalists marrying princes, or fake European monarchies populated by identical strangers, or Lindsay Lohan having some sort of non-catastrophic brain injury, or Brooke Shields spontaneously buying a castle in Scotland and toasting to “women buying castles!” I huff them like paint thinner, with the exact same results. And I worry that by pointing out how insane these movies are, for years on end now, I have accidentally bullied Netflix into making them more normal.
This year’s offerings — Champagne Problems, Jingle Bell Heist, A Merry Little Ex-Mas, and My Secret Santa — aren’t good, per se. If I watched them in a vacuum, devoid of their Netflix Christmas context, I wouldn’t understand what the hell was happening (and perhaps this is what we have to look forward to, what with the bleak and imminent Netflix purchase of Warner Bros — a film industry overflowing with Netflix Christmas movies.) But at least two or three of these movies are not surreal in the way that their predecessors have always been. There’s something eerily coherent about them. They’re workmanlike, occasionally competent. They appear to have been directed. The dialogue is corny and dated and hyper-literal, to be sure, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been fed through a black hole. There’s not a journalist to be found among its protagonists; nobody is identical to anyone else. There are no mistaken identities and no Lindsay Lohan, amnesiac or otherwise. The costumes approximate real human clothing and there are no high-voltage castles that appear to be made out of Wheat Thins and tape.
Despite this, I will bravely proceed. Reassuringly, each film still features at least some of the genre’s traditional hallmarks — fake small towns, overly explanatory introductory voiceovers that I assume are mandated by Netflix executives, montages set in Christmas markets, unnecessarily ugly and expensive winter coats, a single chaste kiss between two people who make no sense as a couple, and a celebrity who, at one point, was very famous and is now less famous.
What “happens” in this movie? My Secret Santa feels, reassuringly, most like the Netflix Christmas movies of yore — inert, featureless, a dispatch from the void. It is a near-direct rip of Mrs. Doubtfire, sometimes recreating entire sequences. Taylor Jacobson (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a single mom living in a ski town who abandoned her teenage dreams of becoming a rockstar to raise her daughter. When we meet her, she’s working in a Christmas cookie factory, where she is abruptly fired on the spot due to “downsizing” (right before Christmas). Jobless and panicked, she for some reason agrees to send her daughter to “the best snowboarding school” in the country during winter break; the school is wildly expensive, but she realizes she can get half off the school if she gets a job at the resort. The only job available there is Santa Clause. With help from her gay brother and his similarly gay husband, she transforms into the sort of man who might successfully impersonate Santa. She names herself “Hugh Man.” Meanwhile, she’s falling for the Leland-Palmer-esque head of the ski resort’s failson, Matthew (Ryan Eggold). Matthew has never had a job in his life but is being forced, petulantly, to work for his dad so he will not have to go to Italian prison for I honestly already forget what. We are meant to find him attractive. Tia Mowry is also there.
Does it take place in a fake European country? No, but it appears to be filmed at the exact same (fake?) ski resort as the Lindsay Lohan amnesiac classic Falling for Christmas. This choice would be in line with that movie, previously described (by me) as an It’s a Wonderful Life-slash-Dante’s-Inferno-style dream ballet taking place in Limbo.
What is the first line of the movie, and is it voice-over? Startlingly, it’s not a voice-over, but an actual line of dialogue. Taylor is investigating a Santa cookie at the Clotz Cookie Factory (one of several proper nouns in this film that have no discernible origin) and looks disappointed. “Found another one,” she says. “Look at Santa’s face. He is clearly depressed.” Seconds later, her boss fires her due to “low demand for Christmas cookies.”
What else do people say in a way that implies what they are saying is normal human speech but actually it’s not? This movie is a beautiful cornucopia of such lines. “Before your mother died, I promised I would raise you the best I possibly could. I thought that meant an endless supply of money.” “I’m a free spirit and you can’t hold me down like this.” “You look so familiar” (said to Santa). “Santa is an idea that we can all be a part of.”
Is there a glaringly obvious Chekhovian plot point introduced early on that otherwise has no right being in this movie — or any movie for that matter? It’s not so much Chekhovian as Doubtfireian. This movie recreates the makeover montage, replete with the prosthetics and the gay brother, as well as the party scene wherein the protagonist must appear as both themselves and their rotund elderly character. Ultimately I realized My Secret Santa is meant to take place in a universe where Mrs. Doubtfire does not exist as a film; I felt calmed by that. This became clear when I saw the characters use social media and websites that do not exist in our current timeline, including a platform called Happened, where people post things that happened; a meme-based platform called CeeZu (!); and a search engine called LookPath.
Is someone an orphan, making it convenient for them to drop their entire lives during the holiday season? Taylor seems to have no living family. At one point “Grandpa” is mentioned, but he does not show up, even on Christmas. Henri has his estranged dad and a dead mother, like almost every other male love interest in these movies.
Does somebody (or multiple people) have a disengaged or deadbeat father with whom they ultimately heal their relationship by the end of the film? Zoe’s deadbeat father, who left her as a baby to become a rockstar, does not show up to do any sort of healing. However, healing happens between Matthew and his disengaged billionaire father, who admits to underestimating him and not being emotionally available after the death of Matthew’s mom.
Do entire relationships take place over FaceTime or Skype? Facetime and Skype do not exist in the universe of Secret Santa. Just CeeZu, Happened, LookPath, and Clotz. Neither do W2s, apparently, as nobody ever questions how or why Hugh Man is related to Taylor’s daughter, who immediately receives her half-off school tuition but doesn’t recognize her mom when she walks around the resort as Santa.
Do the protagonists just state their objectives out loud to each other all the time? Often. “I want my mom to get a boyfriend,” says Zoe to her mother, who she doesn’t recognize in her Santa drag. “I want her to start dating and have a life outside of being my mom all the time.” Her gay brother similarly states her character objectives to her face: “Where’s my sister? The wild one who had her own rock band at 16? Who mooned the crowd at graduation? Maybe this is your chance to find her again.”
Is something set on fire? A flaming candy cane shot sets Santa/Taylor’s beard on fire.
Is there an impish rando who winks and then intervenes into the protagonist’s life to make it more Christmas-y? The most impish rando here is Tia Mowry, Matthew’s coworker, who makes half-hearted attempts to sabotage Matthew’s new job at the hotel, and ultimately exposes Taylor’s Santa con. By the end, however, you know she’s gonna be discovering the spirit of Christmas.
Is there a wise, bawdy elderly person? Yes. Taylor as Santa. Outside of the Santa costume, she is the sort of personality-free woman who appears in Netflix Christmas movies, who needs to let go of her strict rules about dating/work/life/cookies/dressing up as a man/committing tax fraud. Inside the Santa costume, however, she dispenses incisive pearls of wisdom to the young and old alike, even going so far as to cure a young girl’s stutter by suggesting she sing “Jingle Bells.”
Does someone have a job they hate but also a secret, weird passion that they decide to follow by the end of the movie? Taylor hates being a Christmas cookie factory worker and really wants to be a rockstar. By the end of the movie she has gotten a job at the ski resort as the “executive director of family events.”
Does it end with a flash forward to one year later, where everyone in the cast is having an improbably nice time? We don’t flash forward an entire year, but to Christmas day, where everyone is having an improbably nice time at Taylor’s apartment, including the billionaire owner of the ski resort and Taylor’s super.
What “happens” in this movie? In the second most classically Netflix-Christmas movie of the bunch, Minka Kelly — her voice pitched several octaves higher than usual — is Sydney, an American workaholic divorced marketing girlboss tasked with acquiring small businesses for her firm. Enter Château Cassell, a French Champagne vineyard, where Sydney must fly right before Christmas to convince its owner to let her firm — called “The Roth Group” — acquire his beloved family compound. When she arrives, she learns she must compete for the acquisition against a Herzogian German man, an underhanded Frenchwoman, and an ebullient gay American billionaire. As is customary, she falls in love with the Champagnemaker’s son Henri (Tom Wozniczka) at a Parisian bookstore the night before and has to figure out what the hell to do about all of that.
Does it take place in a fake European country? This version of France is fake because the French woman who checks Sydney into the hotel is really nice to her.
What is the first line of the movie, and is it voice-over? Yes. “Let’s talk about Champagne,” says Sydney, over what appear to be AI-generated shots of fake people drinking Champagne in various fake scenarios. “Champagne isn’t just a drink. It’s a celebration. Champagne rings in the New Year and makes toasts at every wedding.”
What else do people say in a way that implies what they are saying is normal human speech but actually it’s not? “Sometimes you can live a whole life in just one day. I had a great life today.” “Me and trust aren’t exactly on speaking terms these days.”
Is there a glaringly obvious Chekhovian plot point introduced early on that otherwise has no right being in this movie — or any movie for that matter? Yes, several. One is the sort of shameless product placement that these movies excel in. Henri’s butler greets him at the vineyard by saying, “I didn’t hear you come in!” Henri replies, “Because I got a new electric Peugeot. It’s fast! You should give it a spin this weekend.” Later, the butler does indeed take his car for a spin when Henri needs it for a romantic airport chase. At one point, Henri also randomly tells his father his drive to the vineyard was “easy — I entered the address and the car chose the best route.”
In another scene, Sydney tells her competitors she is lactose intolerant; later, the underhanded Frenchwoman forces a plate of cheese upon her and she spends the rest of the night shitting. She farts in front of Henri and he still likes her, so we know it’s real.
Is someone an orphan, making it convenient for them to drop their entire lives during the holiday season? Sydney’s mom is dead (I think out of all four of these movies, only one protagonist has a mom, and she has cancer) and her dad is out of the picture. Skyler, her younger sister, is in America for the duration of the film, conveniently busy being broke and doing SoulCycle and encouraging Sydney with lines like, “You’re long overdue for an adventure. Even if it’s just for one night. Promise me you’ll take one night off from work to just be Sydney again.” (Echoes of the gay brother of Secret Santa fame.)
Does somebody (or multiple people) have a disengaged or deadbeat father with whom they ultimately heal their relationship by the end of the film? Sydney’s dad “took off right after Skyler was born,” so no healing there. Henri and his dad are mad at each other due to disagreements over Champagne. Ultimately they do have a heart-to-heart about how his father became emotionally distant after the death of his mother and wasn’t there for Henri, even going so far as to get mad at him for reading Le Petite Prince too much as a child (??).
Do the protagonists just state their objectives out loud to each other all the time? “I act like I’m fearless, but on the inside, I feel like a fraud,” says Sydney. “I’m still trying to prove to my father that I can be successful on my own,” says Henri. “You haven’t been the same since you got to Paris,” says Sydney’s boss, one day after she got to Paris.
Is something set on fire? Just Sydney’s bowels.
Do entire relationships take place over FaceTime or Skype? Yes. Sydney and Skyler mostly communicate digitally, and Skyler functions entirely as a plot engine for Sydney. Though they do have a brief scene together early on wherein the following exchange occurs:
“I don’t have time for sightseeing, Sky. This is a huge opportunity for me.”
“You sound like Mom!”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You and I pinky promised each other that when we grew up, we’d see the world.”
Later, when Skyler finds out about Henri, she says, “Don’t you see how perfect this is? It’s like the universe is forcing you to find a balance between work and love!” It really is like that.
Is there an impish rando who winks and then intervenes into the protagonist’s life to make it more Christmas-y? The hotel concierge is our impish rando in this one. Sydney asks him for a bookstore rec to “buy a gift for my sister,” and he winkingly directs her to one called “Les Etoiles,” where Henri, an heir to a Champagne fortune who dreams only of opening a bookstore with a wine shop, haunts the halls. “I think they will have what you’re searching for…” says the concierge.
Is there a wise, bawdy elderly person? The butler who steals the car is very elderly and bawdy.
Does someone have a job they hate but also a secret, weird passion that they decide to follow by the end of the movie?” As mentioned, Henri wants to open a bookstore with wine in it. “He wants me to take over the family business, but I have my own dream,” he tells Sydney of his father. “So we argue all the time.” Sydney’s secret passion is “saving small businesses.” “Every time I saved a small business, it was like I was saving her, too,” she tells Henri of her mother. If only they could combine their shared passions….
Does it end with a flash forward to one year later, where everyone in the cast is having an improbably nice time? Yes. In a wine bookstore! On the grounds of Château Cassell!
What “happens” in this movie? Slightly higher in quality than the previous two films, A Merry Little Ex-Mas follows Kate (Alicia Silverstone) and Everett (Oliver Hudson), who have been together for decades but are now “consciously uncoupling.” Kate is bitter because Everett’s career as a small-town doctor overshadowed her dreams of being an eco-conscious architect. Now she’s a handywoman with two rude children who are both in, or about to be in, college. Kate and Everett also can’t agree on whether it’s better to do handmade or store-bought gifts for Christmas and this is apparently a divorceable offense. When we meet Kate, she is plotting to leave Everett and finally fulfill her architectural dreams in the stunning eco-utopia of Boston. Until she glimpses him with his new girlfriend Tess (Jameela Jamil), gets jealous, and starts flirting with a younger man named Chet (Pierson Fode).
Does it take place in a fake European country? No, but in a fake Vermont town called “Winter Light.” No relation to the 1963 Ingmar Bergman film about incest and whether God is dead, though absolutely thematically tied.
What is the first line of the movie, and is it voice-over? Yes. “Have I got a story to tell you!” says Kate, over an animated retelling of her life. “It’s a Christmas story. I’m Kate. That’s me about 20 years ago. Right out of college, I got a job at this amazing architecture firm in Boston. I was gonna change the world. And then my world changed when I danced at a party with a med school student named Everett.”
What else do people say in a way that implies what they are saying is normal human speech but actually it’s not? “Hashtag lighten up. It’s Christmas.” “As the mayor of Winter Light and your friend, I think you’re making a mistake.”
Is there a glaringly obvious Chekhovian plot point introduced early on that otherwise has no right being in this movie — or any movie for that matter? A few. Much is made of Kate’s obsession with living lightly upon the Earth: she powers her house with solar, fixes broken things instead of replacing them, and only buys used clothing (though her daughter is wearing this season’s Ralph Lauren puffer and she is wearing a $1,500 Canada Goose). Early on, Melissa Joan Hart, who is also here as Kate’s horny friend, says to her quite out of the blue, “Some people think you’re hoarding enough power to light Times Square!” When the town later descends into pitch darkness during a storm, everyone shows up at Kate’s house, where she has in fact hoarded enough power to host everyone.
Is someone an orphan, making it convenient for them to drop their entire lives during the holiday season? Everett is not an orphan — we spend a lot of time with Everett’s two gay dads — but we never hear a word about Kate’s family. Both of their love interests, Chet and Tess, seem to have no other friends or family to speak of, making it convenient for them to hang around at Christmas and function as instigators for Kate and Everett’s inevitable reunion.
Does somebody (or multiple people) have a disengaged or deadbeat father with whom they ultimately heal their relationship by the end of the film? Everett works too much and is accused of sacrificing his family for his career. He has two fathers, but nobody else has any.
Do the protagonists just state their objectives out loud to each other all the time? Yes. Near the end of the film, Everett has a startling and extremely out-of-character monologue about how he became a doctor who works too hard because his dads were gay and he felt like he had to become a doctor to prove even sons of gay dads could be doctors.
Is something set on fire? A character is given a “pocket fireplace” that later burns down a Christmas tree and leads to a moment of heroism for Kate’s son, an aspiring firefighter.
Do entire relationships take place over FaceTime or Skype? This trope is strangely absent, perhaps because the whole thing is a sort of It’s a Wonderful Life-style story about the insularity and peace of small-town living, and how the outside world is a meaningless intrusion.
Is there an impish rando who winks and then intervenes into the protagonist’s life to make it more Christmas-y? Meet Chet, a Christmas-tree salesman, a stripper, a truck driver, and a nanny, among other things.
Is there a wise, bawdy elderly person? Kate’s neighbor Doris, who says sassy 2008-coded things like, “I’m in a book club. All we do is gossip and drink. We haven’t read a book in a decade.”
Does someone have a job they hate but also a secret, weird passion that they decide to follow by the end of the movie? Kate’s dreams of being a hotshot green architect, foiled by her handywoman era, nearly takes her to Boston. But near the end of the film, she realizes she wants to stay in Winter Light and stay married because everything is actually fine. Her son then gets to realize his dream of not going to college and becoming a fireman after Kate, who has been on him for the duration of the film to write his college essays, begins reading his college essay and hurls it into a fire.
Does it end with a flash forward to one year later, where everyone in the cast is having an improbably nice time? Yes. Kate and Everett smooch in front of their Christmas-decorated house, which they refer to as “The Mothership.”
What “happens” in this movie? This is the most normal of this year’s offerings. In comparison to its many peers, Jingle Bell Heist is sophisticated and urbane. Sophia (a charming Olivia Holt) is a sort of Robin-Hood-esque figure who commits minor acts of pickpocketing while working at a luxury London department store called Sterlings to help care for her sick mother, who’s come over with her from America for socialized healthcare. She meets Nick (Connor Swindells), an erstwhile security consultant who now works at a cell phone repair shop, when he catches her in one such act. Soon the two, who’ve both been separately burned by Sterling’s rich and evil owner, decide to pull off the titular heist at the store to pay off her mother’s medical debt and get the recently divorced Nick an apartment where he can see his young daughter. They fall for each other because of her raging daddy issues, despite being the most improbably matched couple in all four films.
Does it take place in a fake European country? This might be the first Netflix Christmas movie actually set in real London.
What is the first line of the movie, and is it voice-over? This is the most normal Christmas movie Netflix has ever made, so there’s no voiceover. We drop in on Nick and Sophia as they’re about to do the heist. They both say, “You don’t have to do this,” at the same time. However, this is still a Netflix Christmas movie, so three minutes in, Sterling’s owner has a brief voiceover as he oversees the shop floor. “Yes. Keep shopping, keep spending,” he thinks to himself. “That’s the true meaning of Christmas.”
What else do people say in a way that implies what they are saying is normal human speech but actually it’s not? I actually have nothing to put here for the first time in my storied history of putting things here.
Is there a glaringly obvious Chekhovian plot point introduced early on that otherwise has no right being in this movie — or any movie for that matter? Sophia’s grandfather was a magician, as she mentions several times, and Nick is a hacker who did the security work for the department store. Together they are a four-legged Chekhovian plot point.
Is someone an orphan, making it convenient for them to drop their entire lives during the holiday season? Nick’s family, outside of his daughter and ex-wife, do not exist. Sophia was, you guessed it, abandoned before birth by her father.
Does somebody (or multiple people) have a disengaged or deadbeat father with whom they ultimately heal their relationship by the end of the film? Sophia’s father refused to acknowledge that she was his child; at the end of the film, we learn that this father is the evil owner of Sterling’s. She heals her relationship with him by robbing him, then exposing his own fraud and having him arrested. Nick is a deadbeat father who has no bedroom for his daughter to sleep in. He heals his relationship with her by robbing Sophia’s father.
Do entire relationships take place over FaceTime or Skype? No! This movie is almost normal!
Do the protagonists just state their objectives out loud to each other all the time? There are a few brief moments where this happens, but otherwise, Jingle Bell Heist innocent.
Is something set on fire? No.
Is there an impish rando who winks and then intervenes into the protagonist’s life to make it more Christmas-y? NO??
Is there a wise, bawdy elderly person? NO!!!
Does someone have a job they hate but also a secret, weird passion that they decide to follow by the end of the movie? Both hate their jobs, but neither expresses a passion in any specific direction. I guess their passion is robbing. I will give this movie additional points for being vaguely about class consciousness and the horrors of the late-capitalist Western empire.
Does it end with a flash forward to one year later, where everyone in the cast is having an improbably nice time? Yes. This does happen, thank God. One year later everyone in the cast is gathered around a dinner table laughing.
