The New Holiday Film Critique – Netflix’s Newest Christmas Romantic Comedy Misses the Sparkle.
Without wanting to sound like the Grinch, one must bemoan the early release of holiday movies before Thanksgiving. While the weather cools, it seems too soon to fully indulge in Netflix’s yearly feast of cheap holiday treats.
Like US candy that no longer contain genuine cocoa, the service’s holiday movies are relied upon for their brand of mediocrity. They provide rote familiarity – familiar actors, modest spending, fake snow, and absurd premises. In the worst cases, these movies are forgettable train wrecks; at best, they are lighthearted distractions.
Champagne Problems, the newest holiday offering, disappears into the broad center of unremarkable territory. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose previous romantic comedy was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like low-quality champagne – appropriately flat and context-dependent.
The story starts with what appears to be a computer-made commercial for drug store brand champagne. This commercial is actually the pitch of the main character, portrayed by the actress, to her coworkers at the Roth Group. The protagonist is the stereotypical image of a professional female – overlooked, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the harm of her private world. After her superior dispatches her to France to close a deal over Christmas, her sister makes her promise spend an evening in Paris to enjoy life.
Naturally, the French capital is the ideal location to wrest one away from digital navigation, even when the city is covered in below-grade CGI snow. At a absurdly cutesy bookshop, the lead meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, who pulls her away from her device. As demanded by the genre, Sydney initially resists this ideal guy for silly reasons.
Just as predictable are the movie mechanics that proceed at sudden shifts, reflecting the rotation of aging champagne bottles in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The catch? Henri is the heir to Chateau Cassel, hesitant to run it and resentful toward his father for putting it up for sale. Maybe the movie’s biggest addition to the genre, he is extremely judgmental of private equity. The conflict? The heroine truly thinks she’s not dismantling the ancestral business for profit, competing against three stereotypical rivals: a stern Frenchwoman, a rigid German, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The development? Sydney’s shady colleague the office rival shows up unannounced. The grist? The two leads look yearningly at each other in festive sleepwear, despite a vast chasm in economic worldview.
The upside and downside is that nothing here sticks beyond a bubbly buzz on an unfilled belly. There’s a lack of substantial content – Minka Kelly, most famous for her role in Friday Night Lights, delivers a merely adequate performance, all sweet surfaces and acts of kindness, more maternal than love interest material. The male star offers just the right amount of Gallic appeal with light inner conflict and nothing more. The gimmicks are unfunny, the romance is harmless, and the ending is predictable.
For all its philosophizing on the luxury of champagne, no one is pretending it is anything but a mainstream product. The things to hate are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about the film a minor issue.
- The Holiday Film can be streamed on the platform.
