Champagne Problems Critique – Netflix’s Latest Holiday Romantic Comedy Misses the Sparkle.
Without wanting to come across as a holiday cynic, one must bemoan the early arrival of holiday movies before Thanksgiving. While temperatures drop, it feels too soon to fully indulge in Netflix’s yearly buffet of low-cost festive entertainment.
Like American chocolates which don’t contain real chocolate, the service’s Christmas movies are relied upon for their brand of badness. They offer rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, low budgets, fake snow, and absurd premises. At worst, these movies are unmemorable disasters; in the best scenarios, they are lighthearted distractions.
The new Netflix film, the newest Christmas offering, blends into the vast middle of the forgettable spectrum. Helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose previous romantic comedy was utterly forgettable, this film feels like cheap bubbly – fittingly lackluster and situational.
It begins with what looks like an AI-generated ad for supermarket sparkling wine. This ad is actually the proposal of Sydney Price, played by Minka Kelly, to her colleagues at the Roth Group. Sydney is the construction paper cut-out of a professional female – underestimated, phone-obsessed, and ambitious to the detriment of her private world. After her boss dispatches her to Paris to close a deal over the holidays, her sibling makes her promise take one night in the city to enjoy life.
Naturally, Paris is the perfect place to pull someone from Google Maps, despite Paris is draped with below-grade CGI snow. At a absurdly cutesy bookstore, Sydney has a charming encounter with Henri Cassell, who pulls her away from her phone. Following the genre, she at first rejects this perfect man for silly reasons.
Just as predictable are the film elements that unfold at abrupt quarter turns, mirroring the turning of old sparkling wine in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The twist? Henri is the heir to the estate, reluctant to run it and bitter toward his father for selling it. Maybe the movie’s most salient contribution to the genre, he is highly critical of private equity. The conflict? The heroine sincerely believes she’s not stripping this family-owned company for parts, competing against three caricatures: a stern Frenchwoman, a rigid German, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The development? Her skeevy coworker Ryan shows up unannounced. The core? The two leads gaze longingly at each other in festive sleepwear, despite a vast chasm in economic worldview.
The upside and downside is that nothing here lingers beyond a short-lived thrill on an empty stomach. There is no real absorbent filler – Minka Kelly, still best known for her role in Friday Night Lights, delivers a merely adequate portrayal, all sweet surfaces and acts of kindness, almost motherly than romantic lead. Tom Wozniczka offers exactly the dollop of French charm with light inner conflict and little else. The gimmicks are not amusing, the romance is harmless, and the happy-ever-after is predictable.
For all its philosophizing on the exclusivity of sparkling wine, no one is pretending this is anything but a mass market item. The things to hate are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about it a champagne problem.
- Champagne Problems can be streamed on Netflix.
