We are back for our third annual ranking of the new original Netflix Christmas films, and the news is good: After last season’s dull vintage, Netflix has gotten back on track and improved its batting average.
Hulu scored with the lesbian romantic comedy “Happiest Season” last year, and now Netflix is striking back with a male version.
Kathy Najimy and Jennifer Coolidge, as Peter’s mother and aunt, deliver particularly delicious turns — the rehearsal scenes for Coolidge’s Christmas pageant alone could have landed this movie in the No.
Regrettably, the film never goes full Roald Dahl on us — if only Tim Burton had directed it.
Once that battle is won, “Love Hard” — which is funnier than most rom-coms and fully embraces a farcical goofiness — can convincingly sell its central relationship.
The film supplies the usual rom-com accouterments, in this case an adorable knitting circle that warmly welcomes Sophie, but it really hangs on the chemistry between Shields and Elwes.
As in the second film, Hudgens plays three parts, with bad-girl Fiona stepping to the fore in a feeble, nonsensical heist plot while Queen Margaret and Princess Stacy lurk in some castle or other, twirling their thumbs .
Young Jules hates Christmas and the young boy’s downcast disposition contaminates the entire movie, which is flaccidly paced and fails to pull off its more festive scenes.
Everything goes south at the family reunion in a British countryside manor, and so does this aggressively awful would-be comedy.
“Father Christmas Is Back” peddles a strange mix of sentimentality and sourness, as all the members of the Christmas-Hope clan, for that is their name, can’t stop bickering and insulting each other.