The Best and Worst Newish Christmas Movies to Stream This Year: Part 2
14 more movies, 1 of which is actually good
In case you missed it, here’s part 1, comprised of 40 movies and an equal number of jokes. As before, we’re only considering movies released directly to a streaming service, which ensures a level of mediocrity I find invigorating.
I’ve broadly grouped everything into categories indicative of their quality. If I applied the same categories to Star Wars, it’d go down like this:
Don’t Waste Your Time: The Rise of Skywalker. Seriously. Don’t even bother.
You Could Definitely Do Better: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones. Watchable if you have the time or love the genre.
An Okay Way to Spend a Few Hours: Revenge of the Sith. Solidly okay.
Good, Not Quite Great: Return of the Jedi, Solo, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi. Movies I will gladly watch.
Great Movies: The Empire Strikes Back, A New Hope, Rogue One. Best of the best.
Movies are in alphabetical order.
Don’t Waste Your Time
Fortunately, I fell on this sword last time. Or I’ve gotten better at picking. Either way, no real stinkers this time.
You Could Definitely Do Better
You would probably never watch these movies under any circumstances except tis the season and you’re chasing that holiday buzz. They might be ugly, but they’ll get the job done.
Once again, most of the movies fall into this category.
A California Christmas: City Lights (2021)
Even though the first movie was not great, I ended up watching the sequel. All of these movies are like 85-95 minutes, the cinematic equivalent of Pringles. Disposable entertainment is usually still entertaining.
The sequel picks up where the first film leaves off. This time as our hero discovers his mother abdicated the business and left someone else in charge. Torn between his newfound love and his desire to remain filthy rich, he heads back to San Francisco to seize the reins. The farm girl comes along, but alas, we don’t get any real fish out of water moments. The script is too clever for that.
LOL kidding.
In writing this, I discovered the leads are actually married. Their relationship predates the first film. Here’s how bad the acting is: I don’t buy them as a couple.
I preferred the sequel of the two, but not that much.
Streaming on Netflix
The Christmas Contract (2018)
The one thing this movie buffet has taught me—apart from my tolerance for objectively bad Christmas movies—is awareness of the deep-seated fear plaguing all women. Previously I’d been oblivious that the thing women most fear is going home alone at the holidays, especially if their ex will be around—because naturally exes are always Christmasing together.
The Christmas Contract proposes a simple solution: Hire a handsome man to pretend to be your boyfriend. In this case, no money is exchanged—just an old-fashioned barter of services. Not those kinds of services. Though it is interesting that the most sensible solution—hiring an escort—is never considered.
You might rightly wonder why our heroine doesn’t buck convention and embrace her singlehood. Ahh, my simple-minded friend—welcome to the world of Christmas movies, where the only thing sadder than a woman pretending to be in a relationship is being alone.
Available on all the free streamers
The Holiday Calendar (2018)
Two lifelong friends would be perfect together but aren’t for reasons nobody outside the screenwriters can explain. They’d probably remain BFFs without bennies, if not for Christmas magic.
I mean that quite literally.
The Holiday Calendar is about a woman who inherits her grandfather’s advent calendar and discovers it predicts the future. Frankly, the best thing about the movie is the calendar itself. I always loved opening the doors of an advent calendar and discovering some candy hidden inside. The calendar in this movie is a piece of art. Me wants.
Streaming on Netflix
Holiday in the Vineyards (2023)
A widow struggling to keep a vineyard from going under while also raising two boys comes to the attention of a rich businesswoman, who herself is a single mother. U-N-I-T-Y? Wrong—this is not a Queen Latifah jam. The businesswoman wants to expand her empire and has her eye on the struggling vineyard. She deploys her most trusted associate, or at least her most available one: her playboy son, who is otherwise busy getting liquored and laid. Tony Stark, but make him stupid.
The best thing about this movie is how closely the premise matches California Christmas:
Single woman fighting all comers to keep land that’s been in the family for years that is also secretly super undervalued, shhh.
A vineyard as ground zero for the conflict.
A privileged dude unfamiliar with the business end of a hammer posing as a common laborer. (Obligatory: how do you do, fellow kids.)
Secret agent man discovers the vineyard is awesome, actually, and not just because the landowner is a smoke show. But mostly that.
The dude in both movies is even played by the same actor.
I choose to believe these movies occur in the same cinematic universe, and the lessons the character learned in the first film have already been forgotten.
Of the two movies, I prefer Holiday in the Vineyards. But not nearly enough to put it in the next category. Let’s not get crazy.
Streaming on Netflix
Joy to the World (2025)
This film concerns a wildly successful author—named Joy, sigh—whose empire was built on Insta-chic familial perfection. Picture a younger, softer Martha Stewart. How soft? She lets her housemaid boss her around. That’s one way to show humility.
To quote Buddy the elf—Joy sits on a throne of lies. She has no family. She mostly eats microwave dinners. Her best friend is the woman cleaning her toilet. If you’re at all suspicious of #influencers, this isn’t a shocking development. Nor is the movie’s big plot twist: her publisher has arranged for a TV crew to join her family’s legendary Christmas Eve celebration.
We don’t need no stinking consent, apparently.
Rather than do any of the logical things, Joy doubles down on the lie. Capitalism, uh, finds a way. And though everything that happens is predictable, I enjoyed the ride. Less so the male lead. I couldn’t put my finger on it until my wife said, “I don’t like him—he’s too smarmy.”
“The actor?”
“Yeah.”
She’s right. He doesn’t work as a guy who’s been friend-zoned for 20+ years and is still waiting for his shot. He’s too self-aware of how handsome he is. I had no problem accepting him as someone who’d strip to save a small town’s bar, though (see: The Merry Gentleman).
I just spent a lot of words dunking on this movie, but it’s actually a decently heartwarming story of found families.
Streaming Disney+/Hulu
Meet Me Next Christmas (2024)
AKA: The Pentatonix Commercial.
A hopeless romantic has a meet-cute in an airport lounge while waiting for her flight. Alas, she’s already taken. They decide to leave it to fate, and agree to meet next Christmas at a Pentatonix concert (LOL) if they’re both single, which is a wild way of demonstrating commitment to your current relationship.
Fast forward exactly one year and the seed our heroine planted has borne fruit. Freed of her pesky relationship, she can pursue the hunky stranger and fate itself. But Pentatonix tickets on Christmas are the new version of Turbo Man—impossible to get. She hires a professional bounty hunter to track them down. Picture Boba Fett sans the armor and with way less disintegrations. The duo go on a city-wide quest and discover something else in the process.
Meet Me Next Christmas is actually a really cute movie, one meriting inclusion in the next rank, if not for one thing: the Pentatonix of it sucks. The music is great. But the band regularly interrupts to watch the quest unfold on social media and weigh in. It’s so bad. They could learn a thing or two about acting from A California Christmas.
Streaming on Netflix
My Dad’s Christmas Date (2020)
I know what you’re probably thinking—why is Jeremy Piven driving on the wrong side of the road?
The short answer: He lives in England. The longer answer: His wife died so he moved to a place that matched his mood.
I’m kidding.
He lived there before she passed away. He probably moved to England because he’s naturally depressive.
Seriously though—this guy makes Charlie Brown look like a good time. His 16-year-old daughter takes matters into her own hands and secretly creates a dating profile for him. That leads to random women approaching him in public because they believe they’re meeting him for a date. It should be hilarious, but this movie has no funny.
This movie is probably the best one in this category. It really wants to wallow though, and that’s not the vibe I’m after this time of year.
Available on all the free streamers
Reporting for Christmas (2023)
A hard-hitting journalist is assigned a puff piece about her network’s corporate sponsor, a Christmas toy manufacturer. That’s probably the most ridiculous thing about this movie. How can a company that only sells toys 1 month out of the year sponsor a TV network? Do they air on public broadcasting?
The company’s heir-in-waiting—e.g. a prince—is a soft-spoken hunk, naturally, pitting the reporter between her journalistic integrity and her more base needs. There’s all sorts of subtext that could be mined, but this is not that kind of movie.
I think my single favorite thing about all these movies is how they just abruptly end. No epilogue, no coda, just fade to black and roll credits. Having absconding with our time, they dip out. It’s like being robbed by a Hallmark card.
Streaming Disney+/Hulu
No Sleep ‘Til Christmas (2018)
The little brother from Brothers and Sisters is all grown up—I definitely saw some gray—but is still a slacker. There’s worse typecastings. This time around, he’s held back by crippling insomnia. The only cure—falling asleep next to a woman he just met, who also can’t sleep.
What are we even doing anymore? Meet-cute used to mean something.
A life-changing codependency develops, one that dabbles with infidelity and bears all the signs of addiction. Fertile ground for exploration, or even laughs. The movie dodges both and instead settles for vaguely fun.
I was tempted to put this one in the next category because it’s solidly decent, but the glaring lack of Christmas held it back. The only Christmas is in the title. It’s even less of a Christmas movie than Die Hard. But Netflix grouped it with the holiday movies, and I wanted to get credit for watching it, so here we are.
Streaming on Netflix
An Okay Way to Spend a Few Hours
These movies are all close to being solidly-good, but are held back by something glaring. You’ll enjoy yourself, but you won’t rush to revisit them.
The Christmas Break (2023)
Justin Long travels to Ireland to celebrate the holidays with his wife. Expect the requisite cultural shenanigans, though Christmas As Usual did it better. The holiday cheer is somewhat lessened because Justin and his wife are grappling with that most difficult of married people decisions. No—not what size TV to put in the living room. Whether or not to have children.
This being a Christmas movie, you can probably guess where they land. I enjoyed the ride. The script isn’t as funny as it should be, but it’s cute.
Streaming Disney+/Hulu
A Merry Little Ex-Mas (2025)
Of all the new Christmas films landing on Netflix in 2025, this was the first I dialed up. I saw Alicia Silverstone, I clicked. She was part of my life during a period of rapid changes, and, uh, I guess some residue of affection remains. Sometimes the decisions are that easy; when you’re braving the uncertain waters of the Christmas genre, any port in a storm.
Silverstone fell completely off the map during the 00s. According to IMDB, she was still in stuff. Just nothing worth seeing. I was literally shocked when she resurfaced in The Baby-Sitters Club, a series I accidentally started watching and then finished. (How to accidentally watch something: wander into a room when it’s on and don’t leave.)
A Merry Little Ex-Mas co-stars Oliver Hudson—someone who’s sorta famous for no discernible reason other than nepotism—as Silverstone’s soon-to-be-ex-husband. They’re both pumped about the divorce but also plan to spend the holidays together, because the one thing we all know about divorce is you only get one if you enjoy each other’s company. Silverstone and Hudson are still in love but have to get a divorce, because, well… it’s never really explained. Hudson is a workaholic is the best we get.
Cute, predictable, had a good time.
Streaming on Netflix
My Secret Santa (2025)
A single mom living paycheck-to-paycheck loses her job right before Christmas. Determined to send her daughter to an elite snowboarding camp—LOL what?—she decides to fill the resort’s vacant Santa Claus position and thereby get 50% off tuition. She manages this trick with some nifty costume work straight out of Mission Impossible, including a 3D printed face.
I imagine the preceding paragraph leaves you with a lot of questions. Rather than dig into the nougaty chewiness of the premise—is she broke because she spends money on things like elite snowboarding camps? does her costumers work for the CIA, or is it a hobby?—we’re offered a lukewarm love story involving the 40-ish trust fund man-baby whose daddy owns the resort. Our heroine has more chemistry with the fat suit.
My Secret Santa plays like a PG version of Just One of the Guys—including a locker room scene—starring two faces you might recognize but can only pair with characters they’ve played: Mel from Virgin River / Kevin’s longtime flame from This Is Us and Tom Keen from The Blacklist. It’s just good enough to get the job done, and only because the Santa scenes are genuinely fun.
Streaming on Netflix
That Christmas (2024)
That Christmas is a budget version of every Pixar movie you’ve ever seen. The likeness is so striking that it takes you a bit out of experience, like listening to a mediocre version of a great song. The movie remains mired in an uncanny valley of its own making, never peaking so much as plateauing. Which is really too bad, because there is some heart among the stock Pixar elements.
The movie follows three intertwining storylines involving kids in the lead-up to Christmas. There’s a blizzard, and adults in jeopardy, and an army of turkeys. A lighthouse is necessary to help Santa find the town. Some of the stuff feels like it’s there just to be there. Zaniness for its own sake.
Still, I actually enjoyed it. That trumps everything I just said.
Streaming on Netflix
Good, Not Quite Great
These films are not classics, but given how evergreen the Christmas genre is and how few of the new movies are actually decent, they will definitely enter my rotation.
Happiest Season (2020)
Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis play a couple who decide to take things to the next level—introducing Kristen to Mackenzie’s family. At Christmas. One minor detail: Mackenzie never told her family she likes girls. And she will not be doing it this Christmas either. Kristen spends most of the movie pretending to be Mackenzie’s orphaned roommate.
To be fair, she does look vaguely homeless.
Imagine Meet the Parents, but gay and merry. There are hijinks and misunderstandings and hurt feelings, but all of it’s nicely done.
The cast is stacked. Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Daniel Levy, Mary Steenburgen, Sidney’s Bristow’s dad from Alias… Sasha from Nobody Wants This even has a delightful cameo as a security guard. This is four-quadrant filmmaking if I’ve ever seen it. Did I mention Daniel Levy is in this? He plays Kristen’s gay bestie and confidant. The movie is at least 30% better whenever he’s on screen.
Happiest Season is funny, heartwarming exploration of identity and the fear of revealing your truest self to those closest to you. I seriously considered putting it in the ‘great movie’ category. It’s not quite on that level. But it’s in the conversation.
Streaming Disney+/Hulu
Great Movies
Of the more than 50(!) Christmas movies I’ve watched in the past few years, Klaus remains the only exceptional one.