The New Holiday Film Critique – Netflix’s Newest Christmas Romantic Comedy Falls Flat.
Without wanting to sound like a holiday cynic, it’s hard not to lament the early arrival of holiday movies before Thanksgiving. Even as the weather cools, it seems premature to fully indulge in Netflix’s annual feast of cheap festive treats.
Like American chocolates which don’t include real chocolate, the service’s Christmas movies are relied upon for their style of mediocrity. They provide predictable elements – familiar actors, modest spending, fake snow, and unbelievable plots. At worst, these films are forgettable train wrecks; at best, they are forgettable fun.
Champagne Problems, the latest Christmas offering, blends into the broad center of the forgettable spectrum. Helmed by the filmmaker, whose previous romantic comedy was so disposable, this movie goes down like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.
It begins with what appears to be a computer-made commercial for supermarket sparkling wine. This commercial is actually the pitch of Sydney Price, played by the actress, to her colleagues at the Roth Group. Sydney is the stereotypical image of a professional female – overlooked, phone-obsessed, and driven to the detriment of her private world. After her boss sends her to France to close a deal over the holidays, her sister insists she spend an evening in the city to enjoy life.
Of course, Paris is the perfect place to wrest one away from digital navigation, despite Paris is draped with unconvincing digital snowfall. In an overly quaint bookstore, the lead has a charming encounter with Henri Cassell, and he pulls her away from her phone. Following the genre, she at first rejects this ideal guy for frivolous excuses.
Equally as expected are the movie mechanics that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, reflecting the turning of old sparkling wine in the vaults of the family vineyard. The twist? The love interest is the heir to the estate, reluctant to run it and bitter toward his father for selling it. In perhaps the film’s biggest addition to romantic comedies, Henri is highly critical of corporate buyouts. The conflict? The heroine truly thinks she’s not stripping this family-owned company for parts, vying against three caricatures: a stern Frenchwoman, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The twist? Sydney’s shady colleague Ryan appears unannounced. The grist? Henri and Sydney look yearningly at each other in holiday pajamas, across a vast chasm in economic worldview.
The gift and the curse is that nothing here lingers beyond a short-lived thrill on an unfilled belly. There’s a lack of substantial content – the lead actress, most famous for her part in the TV series, gives a merely adequate portrayal, all sweet surfaces and gestures of care, almost motherly than romantic lead. Tom Wozniczka provides just the right amount of Gallic appeal with mild self-torture and nothing more. The tricks are unfunny, the love story is harmless, and the happy-ever-after is straightforward.
Despite its waxing poetic on the luxury of champagne, no one is pretending it is anything but a mainstream product. The flaws are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about the film a champagne problem.
- Champagne Problems can be streamed on Netflix.
