Sneaking in just before the fleet of red Coca-Cola trucks comes barreling into town, it’s the arrival of Netflix’s made-for-pittance festive lineup, a holiday tradition that’s similarly bad for your teeth. In 2023, it was kicked off by the deceptively titled Best. Christmas. Ever!, a rotten nadir not just for the genre but for film as a whole last year, and so the perfectly competent Meet Me Next Christmas lands with a respectable shrug. Things have been, and undoubtedly will get, worse in the streamer’s most overstuffed subgenre, so inoffensively watchable will do.
Its low-level success is partly down to Chappelle’s Show director Rusty Cundieff and largely down to lead Christina Milian, the one-time R&B star who has become a staple of the cheapo romcom, first on ABC Family with Snowglobe and Christmas Cupid before graduating to Netflix with Falling Inn Love and the surprisingly enjoyable Resort to Love. She’s been an entertainer of some sort since the age of 15 and there’s a safe-hands ease to her performance here, securing us on side early on. Like a lot of these films, the plot is built from stolen blocks, this time they come from 2001’s John Cusack/Kate Beckinsale romcom Serendipity and Arnie’s 1996 kids caper Jingle All the Way. It cribs the magical meet-cute of the former and partners it with the stressful scramble of the latter, as the romantic future of Milian’s Layla might depend on whether or not she can land a ticket to a sold-out concert.
