The New Holiday Film Critique – Netflix’s Latest Holiday Romcom Lacks Fizz.

At the risk of sound like a holiday cynic, one must lament the premature release of holiday movies prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. While temperatures drop, it feels premature to completely immerse in the platform’s annual buffet of cheap festive entertainment.

Like US candy which don’t include genuine cocoa, the service’s holiday movies are counted on for their brand of badness. They offer rote familiarity – familiar actors, low budgets, artificial winter scenes, and unbelievable plots. In the worst cases, these movies are unmemorable disasters; in the best scenarios, they are forgettable fun.

Champagne Problems, the newest Christmas concoction, disappears into the broad center of unremarkable territory. Directed by the filmmaker, who previously previous romantic comedy was utterly forgettable, this movie goes down like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.

It begins with what looks like an AI-generated ad for supermarket sparkling wine. This ad is actually the proposal of the main character, played by the actress, to her coworkers at the Roth Group. Sydney is the construction paper cut-out of a career woman – underestimated, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the harm of her private world. After her boss dispatches her to France to close a deal over the holidays, her sister insists she take one night in the city to live for herself.

Naturally, Paris is the ideal location to pull someone from digital navigation, despite Paris is draped with unconvincing digital snowfall. In an absurdly cutesy bookshop, the lead meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, who distracts her from her device. Following the genre, she initially resists this ideal guy for frivolous excuses.

Equally as expected are the movie mechanics that unfold at sudden shifts, reflecting the turning of old sparkling wine in the vaults of the family vineyard. The catch? The love interest is the heir to the estate, hesitant to manage it and bitter toward his dad for putting it up for sale. Maybe the movie’s biggest addition to romantic comedies, he is highly critical of private equity. The conflict? The heroine sincerely believes she’s not stripping the ancestral business for parts, competing against three caricatures: a severe French grand dame, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.

The development? Sydney’s skeevy coworker the office rival appears without warning. The core? The two leads gaze longingly at one another in festive sleepwear, despite a huge divide in economic worldview.

The gift and the curse is that nothing here sticks longer than a bubbly buzz on an unfilled belly. There is no real absorbent filler – the lead actress, most famous for her role in Friday Night Lights, gives a strictly serviceable performance, superficially pleasant and acts of kindness, almost motherly than romantic lead. The male star provides exactly the dollop of French charm with mild self-torture and nothing more. The tricks are unfunny, the romance is inoffensive, and the ending is predictable.

Despite its waxing poetic on the exclusivity of sparkling wine, nobody claims this is anything but a mass market item. The flaws are the very reasons some enjoy it. It’s fair to say an expert’s opinion about it a minor issue.

• The Holiday Film is now available on the platform.