The New Holiday Film Critique – The Streaming Giant’s Newest Holiday Romcom Lacks Fizz.
Without wanting to sound like a holiday cynic, one must bemoan the premature release of holiday films prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. While temperatures drop, it seems too soon to completely immerse in Netflix’s yearly feast of cheap festive entertainment.
Similar to American chocolates which don’t contain genuine cocoa, Netflix’s Christmas films are counted on for their style of badness. They offer predictable elements – familiar actors, low budgets, artificial winter scenes, and unbelievable plots. In the worst cases, these films are unmemorable disasters; in the best scenarios, they are forgettable fun.
Champagne Problems, the newest Christmas offering, disappears into the vast middle of the forgettable spectrum. Directed by the filmmaker, who previously previous romantic comedy was so disposable, this movie feels like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.
It begins with what looks like a computer-made commercial for drug store brand champagne. This commercial is actually the pitch of Sydney Price, portrayed by the actress, to her coworkers at the Roth Group. The protagonist is the construction paper cut-out of a professional female – overlooked, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the detriment of her personal life. After her superior sends her to France to close a deal over Christmas, her sibling makes her promise take one night in the city to enjoy life.
Naturally, Paris is the perfect place to wrest one away from digital navigation, despite Paris is draped with unconvincing digital snowfall. In an overly quaint bookshop, Sydney has a charming encounter with the male lead, who distracts her from her device. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she initially resists this ideal guy for frivolous excuses.
Just as predictable are the film elements that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, reflecting the rotation of aging champagne bottles in the cellars of Chateau Cassel. The catch? Henri is the successor to the estate, hesitant to run it and bitter toward his father for selling it. In perhaps the film’s biggest addition to the genre, he is extremely judgmental of private equity. The conflict? The heroine sincerely believes she’s not dismantling the ancestral business for profit, vying against three caricatures: a severe French grand dame, a rigid German, and a delusional gay billionaire.
The twist? Her skeevy coworker Ryan shows up unannounced. The core? The two leads look yearningly at each other in holiday pajamas, despite a huge divide in financial perspective.
The upside and downside is that nothing here sticks beyond a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of substantial content – Minka Kelly, most famous for her part in the TV series, delivers a strictly serviceable portrayal, all sweet surfaces and gestures of care, more maternal than love interest material. Tom Wozniczka provides just the right amount of Gallic appeal with mild self-torture and little else. The gimmicks are unfunny, the love story is harmless, and the happy-ever-after is predictable.
For all its philosophizing on the exclusivity of sparkling wine, 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 it a minor issue.
- Champagne Problems can be streamed on the platform.
