And you thought I wasn't getting you anything for Christmas. Here's my tinsel-bedecked gift to you: I watched four new Netflix holiday rom-coms (well, one of them is only rom-com-adjacent, but there's kissing under the mistletoe so it counts) — so you don't have to. The rating scale: one to five Christmas lights. Merry merry!
"Falling for Christmas"
The premise: A spoiled hotel heiress named Sierra (Lindsay Lohan) gets amnesia after falling from a mountaintop during a photo shoot, as one does. She is taken in by the handsome owner (Chord Overstreet) of a rustic mountain lodge, a kind widower named Jake whose hair has the sort of precise blond highlights not usually found in rustic settings. While there, she learns to do household chores, plans a fundraiser, discovers bacon and becomes a better person. (Bacon makes all of us better people, right?)
The setting: The fictional mountain town of Summit Springs, which is large enough to hold Sierra's father's lavish resort, Jake's lodge and a lot of charmingly ruddy-cheeked people. Apparently there's some sort of magic wall between the resort and the lodge, as absolutely nobody recognizes Sierra — who seems rather easy to spot, as she looks like Lindsay Lohan? — as she trots around town with Jake and his daughter for a seemingly endless period of time. Anyway, it's all very prettily snow-dusted.
The naughty: Nothing about this movie makes any sense at all, including the fact that Jake's young motherless daughter never, ever stops smiling, to the extent that I wondered if maybe Taylor Swift was standing just outside of camera range.
The nice: I appreciate that "Falling for Christmas" has a wee bit of a sense of humor about itself, in that the characters watch Netflix Christmas movies (we glimpse a few seconds of "A Castle for Christmas," and in case anyone's wondering since my Netflix roundup last year, I still have not yet gotten around to buying a Scottish castle). And Lohan's character at one point warbles a bit of "Jingle Bell Rock." Of course the latter just made me want to hit pause and go watch "Mean Girls" again, but I stuck it out.
The decor: The halls are so thoroughly and relentlessly decked in Jake's homey lodge that at first I thought it was a Christmas store having a closeout sale. No wonder they're going broke. Sierra's room even has a wee Christmas tree on the back of the toilet, which seems ... risky?
Rating: 2.5 lights
"The Noel Diary"
The premise: Jake (Justin Hartley), bestselling author of romantic espionage novels, returns home to his upstate town to clear out his late mother's house. While there, he meets Rachel (Barrett Doss), who's seeking to unlock some secrets to her past, and together they uncover a vast government conspiracy involving extraterrestrials posing as tax auditors with the Internal Revenue Service ... naah, I'm just kidding, this is a Netflix Christmas movie. They fall in love. You knew that.
The setting: There's an obligatory road trip here — those wishing to Unlock Secrets In Their Past usually need to go somewhere to do that — and so we get quite a few settings, the most notable of which are the absolutely stunning remote "cabin" (i.e., mansion) owned by Jake's estranged dad, who is apparently secretly wealthy and I would like to know more about this, and a few very Christmas-decorated bed-and-breakfast inns, one of which seems to be trying to set a world record for the most number of candles lit simultaneously. (Isn't that a bit dangerous?)
The naughty: Not only are both Jake and Rachel very dull, they are also apparently superhuman, because they spend the night (quite chastely) in an unheated car during a snowy night and emerge looking utterly fabulous. (Jake then, I must share, leaves Rachel to freeze in the car so that he can confront his father man-to-man, and he and Dad trim a tree and mend fences and reluctantly bond and listen to "I'll Be Home For Christmas" for all of eternity and she is STILL in the car and I got worried. Rest assured, she's fine.) Jake and Rachel also watch an entire screening of "It's A Wonderful Life" sitting outdoors in the snow at a small-town Christmas pageant — is that a thing? — and Jake proves himself capable of making out with Rachel while somehow still holding a chocolate cake with a lit birthday candle.
The nice: Bonnie Bedelia (remember Bonnie Bedelia? From "Presumed Innocent"?) is charming as Ellie, Jake's mom's next-door neighbor, who gets to have a sweet little romance herself. (Not with Jake; with some nice older gent with a fancy car. You go, Ellie.)
The decor: Other than the aforementioned candles, this movie is for the most part sadly bereft of holiday decorations. Plenty of well-behaved snow, though — the kind that falls constantly yet never adds up to more than a picturesque dusting. It's the snow equivalent of movie-star stubble.
Rating: 2 lights
"Christmas With You"
The premise: New York pop star Angelina (Aimee Garcia), struggling to figure out her next holiday hit song, heads out of the city to meet with a young fan — and ends up falling for the fan's handsome single dad Miguel (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and learning that "just having an image isn't like having a life."
The setting: Though we see a bit of Manhattan at the beginning and end (and of Angelina's palatial apartment, where she wanders around chomping on enormous celery sticks), most of the film takes place in an unnamed town two hours away, where Miguel lives with his daughter Cristina and his mother, and where Angelina and her assistant Monique find themselves briefly snowed in. But what luck! Miguel is a music teacher, and Angelina is in need of a song! (Query: Why is Angelina flailing around trying to write a Christmas song when we are told right there in the movie that Christmas is just a few weeks away? Does the music business really work that fast?)
The naughty: Upon watching my third Netflix Christmas movie in a row that features a dead mother (actually two of them here: Angelina's mother and Miguel's late wife/Cristina's mother), I have to ask — really, Netflix, aren't there any cheerier themes you could explore?
The nice: Everyone in this movie is thoroughly, aggressively, absolutely flat-out nice (except maybe the music exec who thinks Angelina is old and not "relevant"). And while all this relentless niceness makes for a fairly slow 90 minutes, there's no denying that Prinze in his dadly half-zip sweaters and Garcia in her pop-star athleisure-wear are fairly adorable. The latter gets bonus points for sweetly selling the line, "I'm a recording artist; I'm not a space alien."
The decor: Some nicely festive shots of a holiday-bedecked Manhattan open the film, but mostly we have to get our Christmas kicks from Miguel and Cristina's house, which is wildly and wonderfully overdecorated right down to matching red plaid shirts and jeans on the entire extended family on Christmas Day.
Rating: 2.5 lights
"Christmas on Mistletoe Farm"
The premise: In this family-friendly comedy, a stressed-out London widower named Matt (Scott Garnham) unexpectedly inherits a farm in rural England and moves there with his vast multitudes of young children — OK, five, but it kind of seems like more — because he thinks there will be "peace and quiet" there. (Matt has apparently not figured out that a man with five young piping-voiced children will not have peace and quiet for many years.) In the country, he and the kids learn the joys of rural life, which involves many cute animals and a lot of relentlessly cheery villagers.
The setting: Think "All Creatures Great and Small," but make it present-day and add a lot of mistletoe.
The naughty: OK, Netflix. I am going to need a word. Who is the Scrooge who decided that "dead mother" was this year's holiday theme? Couldn't you have just let Matt's unfortunate wife run off somewhere — maybe start a new life in Florida with her yoga instructor or something?
The nice: Despite the above, I am unable to be mad at this movie, because it contains scenes of baby goats wearing Christmas sweaters. I repeat: baby goats wearing Christmas sweaters. Though "Christmas at Mistletoe Farm" follows an absolutely predictable arc, as Netflix holiday movies are apparently required by law to do, it's nonetheless rather lovable as it has a sense of humor about itself. Kids will enjoy the animal antics; grown-ups will find plenty at which to giggle. (I quite liked the local fellow who runs the amateur theatrical troupe and keeps reminding everyone that he was once in "The Mousetrap," to groans.)
The decor: Not a ton of holiday decorations on display — Matt is too depressed to deck the halls — but the array of brighter-than-brightly hued sweaters, knit caps and scarves worn by everyone in the cast is remarkably cheering. You can probably see this town from space.
Rating: 3 lights
