As someone who writes a few hundred articles about streaming movies and shows every year, it's probably not surprising that I have to pick what we're watching as a family every Christmas. It's a stressful burden but one I bear, and this year I came home prepped with a list of options headed up by Netflix's new global number-one hit Carry-On.
Right now it's just me and my parents, with siblings still to arrive, so the pressure was on to find an easy movie, and Carry-On is certainly that. It's pretty easy to tell when I've picked a winner, and I saw all of those signs last night.
If you've missed it completely, Carry-On stars Taron Egerton as a young TSA agent working in LAX on Christmas Eve. He finds himself in the middle of a terror plot when an unnamed mastermind (Jason Bateman) tries to force him to let a suspicious bag through his security line.
The movie's really good fun, and increasingly preposterous as it goes on, but paced cleverly enough to ensure that you're never bored or likely to fall out with its ropey logic. My parents consider themselves intellectuals, justifiably, but I could tell they were enjoying it a lot, however guiltily.
For one thing, both of them spent large parts of the movie piping up with sarcastic predictions about what would happen in the next few minutes. That's a sure sign that they're getting into the movie.
Frankly, though, even in a role that has him sitting in the same chair and looking vaguely stressed for two-thirds of his screen time, Taron Egerton is a great watch, and Jason Bateman's having fun with his villainous role, too. Again, you can't expect the most nuanced work here from either, but they both know how to make a performance work in a movie this silly.
Carry-On is the sort of film I'd normally recommend for a long-haul flight (although some obvious elements might negate that for nervous fliers). That sounds like a dig, but it's really an endorsement of its low requirements from you, the viewer. The best streaming services need more of this sort of thing – action movies that don't feel bloated and over-budgeted, however facile they might be.
