The New Holiday Film Critique – Netflix’s Latest Holiday Romantic Comedy Misses the Sparkle.
Without wanting to sound like a holiday cynic, one must lament the premature arrival of holiday movies before Thanksgiving. Even as temperatures drop, it feels too soon to completely immerse in the platform’s annual buffet of low-cost festive treats.
Like American chocolates which don’t include genuine cocoa, Netflix’s holiday movies are counted on for their brand of mediocrity. They offer predictable elements – familiar actors, modest spending, fake snow, and unbelievable plots. At worst, these films are unmemorable disasters; at best, they are lighthearted distractions.
Champagne Problems, the latest Christmas concoction, blends into the vast middle of unremarkable territory. Helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like low-quality champagne – fittingly lackluster and context-dependent.
The story starts with what looks like a computer-made commercial for supermarket sparkling wine. This commercial is actually the pitch of Sydney Price, played by Minka Kelly, to her coworkers at a financial firm. The protagonist is the construction paper cut-out of a professional female – underestimated, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the detriment of her personal life. When her boss dispatches her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over Christmas, her sister makes her promise take one night in the city to live for herself.
Of course, the French capital is the perfect place to pull someone from Google Maps, even when Paris is draped with below-grade CGI snow. At a overly quaint bookshop, Sydney meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, who distracts her from her device. Following rom-com conventions, Sydney at first rejects this perfect man for silly reasons.
Just as predictable are the movie mechanics that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, reflecting the rotation of old sparkling wine in the cellars of Chateau Cassel. The catch? The love interest is the successor to Chateau Cassel, reluctant to run it and bitter toward his father for putting it up for sale. Maybe the film’s biggest addition to the genre, he is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The problem? The heroine truly thinks she’s not dismantling this family-owned company for parts, vying against three stereotypical rivals: a stern Frenchwoman, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The twist? Sydney’s shady colleague Ryan appears without warning. The grist? Henri and Sydney look yearningly at one another in holiday pajamas, across a vast chasm in financial perspective.
The gift and the curse is that nothing here sticks longer than a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There is no substantial content – 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 romantic lead. Tom Wozniczka provides exactly the dollop of French charm with light inner conflict and nothing more. The gimmicks are unfunny, the love story is harmless, and the happy-ever-after is straightforward.
For all its waxing poetic on the exclusivity of champagne, no one is pretending this is anything but a mass market item. The things to hate are also the things to like. One might call an expert’s opinion about the film a champagne problem.
- Champagne Problems is now available on the platform.
