Review Rundown: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like (A Netflix) Christmas

I’m an absolute sucker for Netflix Christmas movies. With a couple exceptions, they’re not good. But they have that Christmas charm that makes them somehow enjoyable. If these movies weren’t centered around Christmas, they would be unwatchable…instead of borderline unwatchable. What can I say, it’s the magic of Christmas.

The common theme with these movies is that they’re bad, except for that they’re good. From a traditional “good” movie standpoint, none even come close. But from the “I want a cheesy Christmas movie that is absurd and ridiculous and fun to watch” standpoint? Well then we’ve got a group of winners.

Love Hard

It’s the classic love story. Girl gets catfished, ends up meeting the actual guy she thought was meeting in the first place, proceeds to catfish him. Ain’t love grand?

Score: 31/100

Princess Switch 3: Romancing The Star

I wrote about this one in depth, but it deserves being mentioned again. This is the newest addition into the Netflix Extended Cinematic Christmas Universe and folks, it’s just as great as you’d expect. Okay, so maybe “great” isn’t exactly right, but hopefully you get the idea. The two biggest drawbacks are that they didn’t really do anything to tie it into the larger universe, and they didn’t add any new Vanessa Hudgens characters, even though there were a couple easy, obvious opportunities to do so.

But it’s still plenty of fun, with the series’ signature flair and absurd plot lines. And Vanessa Hudgens is game once again as she goes all in on her trifecta of performances.

Score: 40/100

A Castle For Christmas

For a movie called A Castle For Christmas, it’s not nearly as absurd or over-the-top as you would hope or expect. The biggest exceptions are the talk show scenes at the beginning and end of the movie. But it still hits all the beats of what you want/expect out of a Netflix Christmas movie.

Brooke Shields plays world-famous author Sophie Brown. After massive fan backlash to her most recent novel, she heads to Scotland, where she buys a castle (as one does), and faces off against the Duke/landlord Myles (Cary Elwes), who definitely won’t become her love interest.

This is probably the closest thing Netflix has to the Hallmark Christmas movies.

Score: 29/100

Father Christmas Is Back

Holy yikes this movie is a mess. Four sisters and their mother get together to celebrate Christmas. When they’re long-estranged father (Kelsey Grammer…wait, that can’t be right, let me double check…yep, Kelsey Grammer is in this train wreck of a movie, that’s too bad for him) shows up, things go from bad to worse.

This movie may have been deserving of its own full review, with how outrageous and terrible it is, but whatever, here we are. Let’s just rattle off some quick bullet points.

Liz Hurley is timeless. Her character sucks, her acting is bad, but it’s still Liz Hurley
John Cleese is also here
- What did he and Kelsey Grammer do to deserve this?
One sister is obsessed with The Beatles and is writing her dissertation on them
- Sure, fine, whatever, just feels lazy to have a British character obsessed with them
One sister, Vicky, is more of a train wreck than the others
- She steals Joanna’s (Hurley) clothes to sell at the local Christmas fair
  - Joanna obviously is upset, but nobody else seems to care and even seems to be on Vicky’s side?
- Vicky also steals Joanna’s boyfriend’s car, to include as a prize at the fair
  - Only the boyfriend is upset about this
  - Nobody even notices? The clothes are one thing, but the car? Come onnnnn
Horse poop bingo
- Yep, real thing that happens
- It’s exactly what it sounds like, which is the horse poops on a space on a bingo card on the ground
- I don’t know if this is real, I really really really hope not, but I also don’t want to have “is horse poop bingo a real thing?” in my Google search history forever
Absolutely terrible C-3PO joke
- If someone knows enough to make that joke here, they know enough that this looks nothing like C-3PO

One of the horniest movies I’ve ever seen
- And not like “well at least it makes sense” kind of way, just in a “why is this movie so horny?” kind of way
- There’s a happy ending joke, which felt as forced as any joke I’ve ever heard
- This moment:

This movie is garbage, but you better believe I ate it up. If it’s not another Christmas Prince or Princess Switch type movie, this is what I want from Netflix Christmas movies.

Score: 15/100

Single All The Way

Wait a minute, what is this? A competent Netflix Christmas rom-com? What’s happening here?

Peter (Michael Urie) convinces his best friend Nick (Philemon Chambers) to accompany him to his family Christmas to pose as his boyfriend, hopefully dodging all the usual relationship questions and prying he usually has to endure. But before he can break the “news”, Peter’s mom tells him she’s set up a blind date for him. In a shocking twist, Peter and James (Luke Macfarlane) hit it off. And thus begins a pseudo love triangle, and you’ll never guess what happens at the end.

Single All The Way is nothing special. It’s a standard-fare romantic comedy that gets the Christmas bump. If this was not set at Christmas-time, it would be much worse with a much lower score. But, it is set at Christmas, so here we are.

It’s cute, it’s fun, it’s simple. It knows what it is and doesn’t try to stray too far from that. It could have gone all out on being ridiculous, but there was great restraint in keeping everything in check. That being said, it still has its moments.

Peter’s family applauds him accepting the blind date. Literally applauds.

Jennifer Coolidge is here! She’s always good for several laughs whenever she pops up. We could have used more of her, but when isn’t that the case?

“My Only Wish (This Year)” by the queen Britney Spears is one of my favorite Christmas songs, and Peter and his sisters have a choreographed routine to it, so that earned a whole bunch of points in my book, literally and figuratively.

Dan Finnerty (aka the lead singer of The Dan Band). You might recognize them from Old School, Starsky and Hutch, and The Hangover.

If you want something close to a “real” movie, Single All The Way is your best bet.

Score: 74/100