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It’s almost the Christmas season, and once again Netflix merely teases us with in-jokes alluding to the Christmas Prince movies instead of providing a new installment from that cherished cinematic universe. However, the streamer has still come through with a half-dozen new holiday rom-coms and a heartwarming family tale. This year’s Christmas movies are a mix of riffs on existing stories (you’ll see some inspiration drawn from Serendipity and Magic Mike), and unique hooks that may or may not fulfill expectations.
Regardless we’ve got hunky snowmen and shirtless dancers, winking nods to Mean Girls and Love Actually, and quite the roster of familiar faces making the season bright: Lindsay Lohan, Lacey Chabert, Dustin Milligan, Christina Milian, and even Brian Cox. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good TUDUM—read on for our ranking of Netflix’s 2024 Christmas movies.
Netflix
5. Hot Frosty
Listen, I did not want this to come in dead last. The high-concept alone—snowman transforms into human and melts ice queen’s heart—should have made it the movie of the season. But with all the action taking place on one small-town street—the cafe, vintage clothing shop, and town hall, all conveniently just a few slushy steps apart—it has a pretty frictionless plot. A snowman (Dustin Milligan) comes to life thanks to a magical scarf bestowed upon him by grieving widow Kathy (Lacey Chabert) and endears himself to the town of Hope Springs, even as he runs afoul of the suspicious sheriff (Craig Robinson) and sympathetic deputy sheriff (Joe Lo Truglio).
I wanted to be more invested in Milligan’s awed experience of the world and how guilelessly he performs good deeds for everyone, but there’s something uncanny valley about him, and not just because he starts out as a well-defined snow sculpture. I don’t know if it’s the longer hair, the dehydrated abs, or perhaps some veneers, but he just looks unreal when as Ted on Schitt’s Creek he was the dream boyfriend. To that end, this movie is somehow both incredibly horny and rather sexless. The greatest chemistry is between Jack and Robinson’s sheriff, who is weirdly invested in busting the snowman, yet the movie’s Yuletide lesson is about as substantial as melting ice.
As my husband (and forever viewing partner) pointed out, the magic of the story isn’t about Kathy falling for Jack, it’s about the town of Hope Springs welcoming him to be a permanent resident. There are some good messages about how she shouldn’t feel obligated to say “I love you” to someone by the end of a 90-minute rom-com, especially considering the awful loss of her husband to cancer. Which makes for an incredibly triggering romance with Jack! Where he’s melting away in front of her and saying, “I don’t know how much time I have left.” I know the man was born yesterday, but come on, read the room.
Points for trying with all the meta in-jokes, referencing everything from A Christmas Prince to Mean Girls, but no candy canes for Gretchen Wieners Hot Frosty.
Netflix
4. Meet Me Next Christmas
This perfectly jolly movie starts out as a modern riff on Serendipity, in which two otherwise attached strangers have a meet-cute—here, at an airport lounge on Christmas—and decide to leave it up to the universe whether they’ll meet again. Though in this case instead of truly trusting fate, they make a date for the following Christmas, to meet again at the Pentatonix show. Layla (Christina Milian) is a diehard fan, and James (Kofi Siriboe) could care less, but he’s the perfect-on-paper guy who endearingly suggests the romantic reunion. Refusing to follow each other on social media is the Serendipity bit, especially when Layla is unexpectedly single the next Yuletide and is looking for a Christmas miracle to score sold-out tickets.
Enter Impromptu, a gig economy concierge service in which struggling but charismatic employee Teddy (Devale Ellis) must move heaven and earth to get Layla the ticket to her supposed soulmate. As she tags along on Teddy’s increasingly desperate search, the movie becomes part of a growing subgenre of Christmas scavenger hunt films—that is, in which the leads get paired up on all manner of odd errands, growing ever closer. This also leads to absolutely wild tonal swings, as they meet woo-woo New Yorkers chasing after exclusive Prada bags and wind up getting coached by Teddy’s fabulous cousin Jordy (played by internet personality Kalen Allen) to compete in a holiday drag ball. All while Pentatonix plays themselves as sassy divas following along with the whole saga on social media.
For a movie produced by and starring Milian, it’s baffling that the 2000s performer sings barely a note. And while Layla and Teddy have fun lip-syncing at the drag ball, it stretches credulity that they would actually place for one of the coveted Christmas prizes. Pentatonix playing themselves almost wears thin at multiple points, only to be rescued by bits like a perfectly-in-chorus delivery of a shocked “what!”… and then back to “wtf” with their super-serious cover of “Hallelujah.” But if you’re into an it’s the journey, not the destination kind of movie, hop aboard the horse and buggy for this one.
Netflix
3. The Merry Gentlemen
I wanted so much more from what should have been a real holiday treat: Magic Mike dunked in hot chocolate, The Full Monty wrapped in Hallmark paper. Instead The Merry Gentlemen doesn’t fully extend into the high kicks, playing it safe while flirting with something I haven’t seen in a holiday movie: anxiety over aging and the passage of time.
After losing her New York City Rockettes-esque dancing job due to ageism, mid-30s Ashley (Britt Robertson) spends the first Christmas home in a long while, only to discover that her parents’ bar the Rhythm Room is in danger of foreclosure… unless she can bring in new customers via some hunky male strippers. One of the potential dancers? Snarky handyman Luke (Chad Michael Murray). The movie’s supposed big draw is matchmaking these two former CW contemporaries—he from One Tree Hill, she from Life Unexpected—but their chemistry isn’t as compelling as the larger story about Ashley finding a new way to love dance.
Both of the aforementioned movie comps don’t quite fit the naughty dance crew; Luke is reluctant, only warming to the routine when he knows Ashley is watching, so it’s not as if dance is part of his actual identity. But there’s also no conflict about what it means for the town’s handyman, cabbie, diner proprietor, and the Rhythm Room’s longtime customer to drop trou. The only obstacle is the same tired refrain of city versus country; despite opening with Ashley forcibly aged out of a profession that doesn’t love her back, the rest of the movie abandons this angst. That said, the casting is incredibly clever, bringing in 2000s rom-com sweetheart Marla Sokoloff as Ashley’s sister, Beth Broderick (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) as their mom, and Maxwell Caulfield (Grease 2) as the Merry Gentlemen’s elder statesman. It’s cute, but nothing to write home about.
Netflix
2. Our Little Secret
The platonic ideal of a Netflix Christmas movie, this one has a hook as great as the yummiest candy cane: Exes Avery (Lindsay Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) see each other for the first time in a decade at the same Christmas celebration—because they’re dating siblings from the same dysfunctional family. Both of their partners are clearly in arrested development thanks to being spoiled by their manically high-strung mom Erica (Kristin Chenoweth, doing just enough). But Logan and Avery decide to keep their past a secret, pretending to be strangers commiserating over the family’s particular holiday eccentricities. Little do they know that theirs isn’t the only secret threatening to come out over the festivities, nor is it the biggest shocker.
What’s fun about Our Little Secret is that the holiday hijinks are never unrealistic; Lohan plays an accidental ingestion of weed gummies without descending into cartoonish paranoia while a crisis involving Erica’s beloved pup and her chocolatey Christmas cookies never devolves into gross-out humor. The movie is grounded in relatable issues of trying to fit into a family that just won’t have you while recognizing that your real family is right in front of you. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a classic, but it’s better than Lohan’s previous Netflix holiday foray, Falling for Christmas, and it’s as well balanced as a perfectly-stuffed stocking.
And yet, it is not the partridge in our pear tree this holiday season. Instead that honor goes to the man behind one of the most polarizing Christmas movies of all time…
Netflix
1. That Christmas
Richard Curtis’ That Christmas hits the sweet spot of what I think of as the Bluey demographic: fun for kids, obviously, and with plenty to tug at parents’ heartstrings. But it is also layered with enough emotional depth (and some Love Actually easter eggs) that all adults will find something to enjoy. Based on various picture books written by Curtis, That Christmas follows the residents of Wellington-on-Sea, a coastal village besieged by a record blizzard over the holidays. Santa Claus (Brian Cox—eat your heart out, J.K. Simmons in Red One) is stymied getting the gifts to deserving children. Yet what the storm really threatens to do is to separate parents and kids on what should be a special morning of family being together.
New kid Danny Williams (Jack Wisniewski) has to spend the day alone since his nurse mum (Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker) has to take care of the dying, but he finds an unexpected connection in fellow loner/terrifying schoolmarm M.S. Trapper (Fiona Shaw). Meanwhile plucky young adult Bernadette (India Brown) is responsible for entertaining her sister and other neighbor kids when their parents are snowbound coming home from a wedding. Then there’s anxious Sam (Zazie Hayhurst), who is so worried about her twin Charlie (Sienna Sayer) winding up on Santa’s naughty list that she doesn’t enjoy the holiday.
It’s like Curtis took the school pageant plot line from Love Actually and expanded it into an entire film, complete with precocious kids and smart pop culture references. But the kids make realistic mistakes, and Curtis even pokes fun at his iconic film’s hotly debated place in Christmas viewing marathons. This film made me bawl with a realistic examination of how Christmas can feel “like a magnifying glass” (i.e., making the lonely parts of the holiday feel worse), yet the happy ending isn’t treacly at all.
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