♪ It’s the mooooost wonderful tiiiiime of the yeeeeear! ♪
That’s right, just as we’re done with Halloween, The Quayside Review is ready to bombard you with some awful Christmas movies. Okay, so they’re not all awful, but don’t expect too many highbrow auteur films to cross your feed until 2021.
Holidate is the latest Netflix Christmas movie to come to screens, starring Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey in the lead roles. The premise is pretty simple: both of them suck at dating. (Ah yes, that old rom-com chestnut.) In order to please their families and friends, they make a deal to be each other’s ‘holidate’, which means they meet up every holiday to keep each other company. Their contract doesn’t only cover Christmas though: Sloane and Jackson decide to apply this deal to everything from Valentine’s Day to Cinco de Mayo. As you’d expect, their attempts not to catch feelings for one another don’t work out entirely as planned.
Wow, there’s really no build-up in this movie, is there? They throw you right in and leave you flailing in the deep end while you try and figure out what the hell is going on. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to catch up due to the simplistic and mostly vapid nature of it all.
This movie is entirely stupid, but I will admit that it’s quite funny. And a lot more foul-mouthed than I anticipated. Don’t go into it thinking it’s a family film… unless hearing Emma Roberts say the word ‘cum’ at least once is okay with you. Whatever, at least it’s a little bit more original than your usual Hallmark Christmas nonsense. And don’t think you’ve escaped those by coming here either – there are many Hallmark nonsense movies on the way…
Cliched and utterly predictable, there’s nothing that will really surprise you with the plot here. But it’s still fun. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of negativity surrounding Holidate from critics and movie-watchers, purely because it’s void of meaning and is definitely just a chick flick type, but don’t let them put you off. If you’re looking for an easy and sometimes funny watch, look no further.
Aside from the average plot, there’s a bunch of brilliant cast members in the secondary ensemble (Jessica Capshaw, Kristin Chenoweth et al). The stand out here however is Luke Bracey as the leading man. Personally I’ve not seen him in anything before but I wouldn’t mind if he started popping up elsewhere. He’s the true surprise of this movie, especially because the straight white guy is literally never my favourite. (Except for you, President Bartlet. You’re the exception.)
Overall, it’s all a little too long and repetitive but meh. Who cares? Funny enough to be watchable, yet nothing outstanding. Still a bearable holiday movie nonetheless, and again, don’t let critics put you off just because it’s not fucking Citizen Kane.
It’s getting a lot of hate and will only get more due to some pretentious snobbery, but I enjoyed it, and you might too. Sue me 💃🏻🎅🏽
Holidate is available to stream on Netflix in the UK.
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