Another one of these… and I keep doing it to myself. Sigh. But if even one of these Christmas flops is good, then I haven’t wasted ALL of my free time. But this wasn’t quite it.
So this time a couple goes through a bad breakup and they don’t see each other for ten years. By a wild coincidence, they unknowingly wind up dating siblings who invite them to Christmas. Once the couple realize their situation, they can’t – for mysterious reasons – keep quiet that they once dated a long, long time ago.
This is a dumb rom-com that, even by the low standards of dumb rom-coms, has a dumb premise. It’s a situation in search of a problem… because how is “we dated ten years ago” an issue? Just make a joke about it and move on. But it has to exist to give them the zillionth “big reveal” ending.
The odd thing is, the film is actually far more interested in other contrived problems like eating all the Christmas cookies and eating THC gummies… really just a lot of eating. All of which leads to even more big reveals, ones that are silly but at least generate low levels of actual farcical comedy.
These silly, contrived scenarios have a minty fresh stink of something mildly amusing. Probably should have just ejected the stupid gimmick and leaned into a Meet the Parents comedy instead. Kristin Chenoweth put too much effort into this flick to have Lindsay Lohan and some dude have the lion’s share of the plot.
This is another iffy Christmas rom-com but I’ve already seen worse this year so I guess three cheers for barely ok? It’s bad but not offensively bad and even has some half-way decent gags and a fun – but too short – musical number. Maybe watch it if you are desperate… or if you just love these kinds of movies, regardless of objective quality.
Score: 70