Director: John Whitesell
Writer: Tiffany Paulsen
Starring: Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, Kristin Chenoweth, and Manish Dayal
There was one thought consistently running through my head while watching Holidate, Netflix’s latest no-doubt overpriced holiday romp: Emma Roberts is beautiful. As one who tends to avoid mainstream Hollywood fare (what can I say, I’m a cinematic snob), I can honestly say that I haven’t seen her in anything else before, but she has a natural beauty that I just couldn’t take my eyes off of; it also helps that she’s easily the best part of the movie, which can’t decide if it wants to be an “edgy” take on the romantic comedy, or just a straightforward formula follower.
Emma (I’m just going to go ahead and say we’re on a first name basis now) plays Sloane (apparently a very popular name in cheesy holiday flicks these days), a woman who is afraid of commitment following a break-up. Through her promiscuous Aunt Susan, she hears about the idea of a “holidate”: that is, a person that you bring around only on holidays to at least give the appearance that your love life is together.
At a coffeeshop, she meets Jackson, a man who has similar reservations about love; he agrees to be her holiday partner all year long. And that’s what happens: through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even the less popular ones, they seem inseparable. And yet, at the end of the night, they separate, only to fall out of touch until the next one. Of course, though, things don’t go as planned when they start falling for each other—a process that gets drug out for so long, that the movie threatens to become boring.
I think the issue here is that these characters clearly have some chemistry together right from the outset: their initial scenes together seem effortless, and adorable. This would have worked better if it took the place over one night, and followed the two as they slowly came to grips with the feelings they have for one another. But then, of course, you wouldn’t have the chance to throw in Sloane shitting all over herself, or seeing Aunt Susan’s latest holiday conquest, or have the annoying backstory of Sloane’s ex-boyfriend, who she can’t seem to get over, yet who seems to turn up everywhere with his new girlfriend.
Of course, the idea is that “holidating” brings very little pressure, and thus the two are free to be themselves; once feelings start working their way in, that’s when the whole set-up is ruined, because it feels too much like commitment. But rather than embrace the chemistry of its stars, the movie goes out of its way to refute it. To an impossible, frustrating degree. At what point does denying something obvious no longer come off as cute, but just obnoxious? I’d say around the one-hour mark here…maybe even earlier.
It all combines to form a movie that’s unnecessarily tough to watch, mainly due to the excessive denial of Sloane’s character, who is so stubborn and hard-headed that not even Jackson’s impassioned confession of love can win her over. Eventually, of course, she comes to her senses, but Holidate seems to take pride in throwing one obstacle after another towards her; that’s par for the course in these tales, but the problem is, they are all obstacles we’ve seen a thousand times in a thousand different romantic movies, and—despite the movie desperately wanting to prove to us how “edgy” and “independent” it is by smattering in profanities and promiscuous characters—it has nothing new to add or say about them. It’s like when Lady Gaga first "burst" onto the music scene: Remember when she wore meat dresses and over-the-top attire (no doubt picked out by stylists) and everyone was saying how “edgy” and “experimental” she was even though all her music was on soft rock radio stations? That kind of sums this one up: it tries so hard to show you that it’s not like other movies by using the "f" word in its opening line (a tacky tactic), but then doesn’t have the guts to be different anywhere else.
One thing that did kind of shock me is just how little spoofery or self-awareness there is: it’s just your typical schmaltzy love-fest, only with the occasional “fuck” added (oh, and a sex scene; admittedly I’d be fine with more of those in these kinds of movies) to trick you into thinking it’s something more. This would have actually been the perfect foundation for an “anti-Christmas romance” movie, that spoofs the subgenre while still paying affectionate homage to it; instead it’s just as limp in the story department as most others.
Honestly, the movie is carried by Ms. Roberts and Luke Bracey, as Jackson, who have great chemistry together. It’s just a shame that a big part of the movie consists of denying that connection just for the sake of following a tired formula that’s begging to be subverted. I guess that’s the opposite problem many of these movies suffer from, and that’s forcing you to care for two characters who clearly have nothing between them in “real life”, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a good problem for viewers, who may find themselves tuning out for large stretches of time.
OVERALL RATING: 5/10
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