What’s the best thing about Christmas? Presents? The crisp, frosty air? The general sense of goodwill to all mankind?
Um, no, no and no. It is, of course, sitting down with family, or friends (or, if you’re feeling particularly self indulgent, a glass of mulled wine) and bingeing a lot of bad Christmas films.
These decidedly odd holiday movies have become their own micro-economy in recent years. They differ in terms of the celeb involved and the Christmas story they’re ‘retelling’, but some things remain the same: extreme cheesiness; questionable acting; a terrible pun or six; and a decidedly unbelievable love story.
Yes, they can be terrible. But there is a level of terrible where it becomes excellent. Previous years have gifted us films like Hot Frosty and Lindsay Lohan’s appalling Falling for Christmas, which are of course camp masterpieces.
In honour of the upcoming festive season, the Standard’s culture team rounded up the ones they’re most looking forward to watching this year.
A Very Jonas Christmas on Disney+
Thought the Jonas Brothers were a Noughties phenomenon? Well, the Disney+ production team would like to have a word. This exceptionally odd mockumentary casts the brothers as themselves… only in this alternate version of reality, they’re just not gelling the same way they used to.
“What’s got a famous rockstar like you so down?” a random man in a tight red leather jacket asks Joe in a British pub. A tad on the nose, but hey, that’s not an issue for Joe, who promptly unburdens himself over a proper English pint: the brothers are on the rocks.
But hey, that’s the magic of Christmas. Next thing you know, their private jet has been struck by lightning (gasp), stranding them in Europe for the festive season! Cue shenanigans, brotherly bonding and Joe very obviously moving on from Sophie Turner via a new manufactured love interest. Honestly, I could not watch this trailer without cringing out of my body and into another dimension, but perhaps that is the point.
A Very Jonas Christmas is streaming now on Disney+
My Secret Santa on Netflix
Every good shmaltzy Christmas romcom needs a preposterous set-up, and My Secret Santa really goes full jingle bells to the wall.
Taylor Jacobson (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a single mom who works two jobs, one of which is pretending to be an old man to get hired as Father Christmas for Sun Peaks ski resort to snag a discount on her daughter’s snowboard lessons.
Seriously, the trailer shows her getting a makeover that includes a Mission Impossible-style face mask to impersonate a jolly elderly gentleman. Netflix is billing it as “Mrs. Doubtfire in reverse” with a festive twist, natch.
Her cunning ruse runs into complications when the hunky ski hotel manager Matthew Lane (Ryan Eggold) persistently hits on her in woman form, while her Santa achieves viral fame and becomes his confidante. Hijinks ensue, mainly due to the conceit that Santa spends all his time in character. Did the job description stipulate method acting for the children’s entertainment?
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for some Shakespeare-level comedy when Lane discovers he has the confusing hots for Santa. Go sit on his knee and tell him what you want for Christmas, Matty!
My Secret Santa is streaming on Netflix from 3 December
Christmas Karma in cinemas
Take Dickens, but give it the makeover nobody asked for. By which I mean, prepare to blast your eyeballs with an outrageously camp-looking Bollywood-flavoured spectacle.
This festive film is set once again in London (Americans sure do love Christmas in London), which is apt, as the story it’s retelling is A Christmas Carol. Our Scrooge is a sharply dressed Kunal Nayyar who complains at cabbies (Danny Dyer) and refuses to tip them. Just as well some ghosts are visiting him tonight, then: namely a fabulously dressed Billy Porter, and… Eva Longoria dressed up like a Dia de Los Muertes pirate?
Look, even the trailer can’t make it make sense, but it’s stuffed with celebs and Gary Barlow wrote some songs for it. Your nan will love it.
Christmas Karma is in cinemas now
The Firefighter's Christmas Wish on W Network
Let’s go, lesbians! Queer pairings are shockingly under-served by the Christmas Movie Industrial Complex, probably because the target audience is straight Christian midwestern ladies in loveless marriages.
Yes, we got Kristen Stewart in 2020 flick Happiest Season, but it was a decidedly miserable take on sapphic romance with some very un-Christmassy internalised homophobia. Boo.
The Firefighter’s Christmas Wish, however, looks like fun. Dani (Holly Deveaux) is a hot firefighter who agrees to pose for a Holiday Heroes charity calendar, and Sasha (Kyana Teresa) is the photographer for the job.
There’s no trailer, just a poster and a release date. Fingers crossed it’s as hot and abs-filled as the Wahine Toa Firefighters Calendar, the all-woman pin-up calendar for the female gaze that went viral on the sapphic internet earlier this year.
It’s a Canadian Hallmark project, but if it doesn’t get a UK streaming release I’m counting it as a hate crime.
The Firefighter’s Christmas Wish premieres on W Network 21 December
A Merry Little Ex-Mas on Netflix
Netflix’s domination of all things festive continues with this extremely by-the-books number that nonetheless features both Alicia Silverstone and a hot young Santa – by which I mean, I will be watching.
The ‘ex-mas’ of the title concerns Silverstone’s character Kate, who starts the film amicably divorcing her husband Everett (Oliver Hudson). Nevertheless, Kate is determined to do the usual family Christmas, until news reaches her that Everett has moved on and is dating a woman named Tess (Jameela Jamil).
What’s a girl to do? Oh, well, how about strike up a very flirtatious bit of banter with the local Christmas-store Santa (Pierson Fodé), who just happens to be 28 and (for reasons best known to himself) decides to help her make her ex jealous.
Is the message itself a bit problematic? Sure. But shh, just look at those abs, and listen to the holly jolly music. Merry Ex-Mas one and all.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas is streaming now on Netflix
Champagne Problems on Netflix
I suspect the French tourism board had a hand in funding this blatant advertisement for all things France, but I’m not mad about it. Sadly, apart from the reference to the Evermore song in the title, there’s no discernable connection to Taylor Swift.
Sydney Price (Minka Kelly) is an ambitious big-city career lady who doesn’t take time for herself (that old romcom roast chestnut) sent over to Paris to seal the deal on a corporate buy-out of a family wine business.
Letting loose for one magical night in Paris, she hooks up with a Gallic hottie Henri Cassell (Tom Wozniczka) only to discover that he’s the heir to the very winery the Roth Group has in its sights.
Obviously he is disgusted by the idea that Americans want to get their mitts on Chateau Cassell, so he foolishly takes the competing potential buyers out to the countryside to see how charming and asset-strippable their champagne business is.
Who will win, Sydney’s love for climbing the greasy pole of private equity, or a snooty Frenchman brooding at her over a glass of fizz? One to get prosecco-drunk with your friends and half-watch on the sofa.
Champagne Problems is streaming now on Netflix
Tyler Perry's Finding Joy on Prime Video
American filmmaker Tyler Perry turns his attention to the Hallmark movie. Shannon Thornton plays the main character, Joy (because of course she’s called Joy. See: terrible puns), a high flying fashionista of some sort who is head over heels for the handsome Colton. But of course this is not the guy she is destined to end up with, despite the fact he invites her back to his family home in Colorado for the festive season.
“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” she’s told by a friend. “These romances novels don’t happen in real life.” Well, think again, friend, because soon enough (and for rather unclear reasons) Joy ends up stuck in the cabin of a hunky hermit for Christmas instead.
The hermit (Tosin Morohunfola) is called Ridge, and he’s a wounded, empathetic soul. What are the odds! Will they get on like a rustic hut on fire? What do you think.
Tyler Perry’s Finding Joy is streaming now on Prime Video
Jingle Bell Heist on Netflix
The anti-capitalist messaging of this Christmas heist flick is actually pretty rad, although tonally it looks a little wonky. Is this Oceans 25 December, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Cracker Barrels?
Sophia (Olivia Holt) is a sassy American department store worker/pint puller at an old man pub plotting to rob her boss, Maxwell Stirling, for the £500,000 cash he has stashed in his office.
Nick (Connor Swindells) is a cockney odd jobs man who has been stiffed for payment for upgrading Stirling’s security system and plans to get paid by exploiting it.They meet while casing the joint and decide to pool resources to get one over on their horrible boss.
Their odd couple partnership makes full use of enemies to lovers romance trope, including the classic move of a fake makeout sesh to avoid suspicion, only with the protagonists wearing Santa Suits. There’s also, by the looks of it, a B-plot where they attempt to honey trap Stirling’s bored and horny wife, played by Amandaland’s Lucy Punch.
Despite the gritty premise, the trailer makes it seem like it quickly descends into Home Alone-style slapstick. Still we’ll probably tune in to watch a takedown of “London’s most notorious department store”, which is clearly scandal-ridden Harrods with the serial numbers filed off to avoid a lawsuit.
Jingle Bell Heist is streaming on Netflix from 26 November
