The New Holiday Film Critique – The Streaming Giant’s Latest Holiday Romcom Misses the Sparkle.
Without wanting to sound like the Grinch, one must bemoan the premature release of Christmas movies prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. While temperatures drop, it feels premature to fully indulge in the platform’s yearly buffet of low-cost festive entertainment.
Similar to American chocolates which don’t include real chocolate, Netflix’s holiday films are relied upon for their brand of mediocrity. They provide rote familiarity – familiar actors, low budgets, fake snow, and absurd premises. At worst, these movies are unmemorable disasters; in the best scenarios, they are lighthearted distractions.
Champagne Problems, the newest holiday offering, blends into the vast middle of the forgettable spectrum. Helmed by the filmmaker, whose previous romantic comedy was so disposable, this movie goes down 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 proposal of Sydney Price, played by the actress, to her colleagues at a financial firm. Sydney is the construction paper cut-out of a professional female – overlooked, phone-obsessed, and ambitious to the harm of her personal life. When her superior sends her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over the holidays, her sister makes her promise spend an evening in the city to live for herself.
Naturally, the French capital is the perfect place to pull someone from digital navigation, despite Paris is draped with unconvincing digital snowfall. In an overly quaint bookstore, Sydney meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, who pulls her away from her device. As demanded by rom-com conventions, Sydney initially resists this ideal guy for silly reasons.
Just as predictable are the film elements that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, mirroring the rotation of aging champagne bottles in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The catch? Henri is the successor to Chateau Cassel, hesitant to manage it and bitter toward his father for putting it up for sale. Maybe the film’s most salient contribution to romantic comedies, he is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The problem? 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 twist? Her shady colleague the office rival appears without warning. The core? Henri and Sydney gaze longingly at one another in holiday pajamas, across a vast chasm in economic worldview.
The upside and downside is that none of this sticks beyond a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of real absorbent filler – Minka Kelly, still best known for her part in the TV series, gives a strictly serviceable performance, all sweet surfaces and gestures of care, more maternal than love interest material. The male star provides exactly the dollop of Gallic appeal with mild self-torture and nothing more. The gimmicks are unfunny, the romance is harmless, and the ending is straightforward.
For all its philosophizing on the luxury of champagne, no one is pretending this is anything but a mass market item. The flaws are also the things to like. It’s fair to say an expert’s opinion about the film a minor issue.
- The Holiday Film can be streamed on Netflix.
