This is the time of year for cheesy holiday romance! Every year, Netflix adds the most ludicrous collection of romantic comedies to its collection of Christmas movies. It has progressed to the point where it resembles a small portion of a movie world. Cameo appearances are made by characters, parallel films are displayed on TVs, and fictional nations are mentioned in passing. The Holiday Cinematic Universe on Netflix has just the right amount of predictable and corny cheer to get you in the holiday spirit.
Of course, not every one of these movies is worth watching. For all the merry people out there who may, at some point, find themselves in the need for some cheesy holiday sweetness but might not be sure where to start, I’ve taken the liberty of ranking each romantic comedy from Netflix’s Christmas catalogue. Be at ease! Nobody else should be forced to endure the heinous crimes that rom-coms frequently commit. Are the majority of these movies truly awful? Yes! Did I still enjoy myself immensely while sitting through each and every one of them? Yes, also! Will I revisit the majority of these films throughout the upcoming Christmas season? Probably!
Here are all of the holiday romantic comedies on Netflix:
A California Christmas (2020)
Director: Shaun Paul Piccinino
It’s rather brazen of this movie to include the word “Christmas” in the title when, once more, it scarcely figures into the plot. A Christmas in California is painfully typical. Here’s the main points: The cruel rural girl is tricked into selling her land to his family’s business by a rich city lad posing as a ranch hand, but the boy eventually falls in love while acting deceptively. The film follows the tried-and-true rom-com pattern exactly. Mean farm girl’s tragic past helps to explain her actions (and also has an overprotective and jealous friend who is far too involved in her life). The funny sidekick who makes sure the rich city boy’s cover isn’t exposed is his chauffeur. This film offers absolutely no innovative ideas, but sometimes that’s just what you need.
A California Christmas: City Lights (2021)
Director: Shaun Paul Piccinino
A California Christmas is by far the most unexpected Netflix holiday romance movie to receive a sequel because there is essentially no justification for it. City Lights, the sequel to A California Christmas, is set a year after the previous film’s events. Joseph (Josh Swickard) and Callie (Lauren Swickard) are now engaged and successfully operating their ranch and vineyard. However, Joseph learns that he must go back to the city after his mother leaves and abandons the family business in order to save the company from losing all of its investors. Given that San Francisco is only a few hours away from the farm, the struggle in this movie is way too dramatic, yet the pair is still having trouble settling on a compromise for their future as a couple. Just get there! Not really that deep!
A Castle for Christmas (2021)
Director: Mary Lambert
In Brooke Shields’ portrayal of a famous novelist who embarrasses herself while promoting her new book on the Drew Barrymore show, the character subsequently goes into hiding in Scotland to escape the negative publicity. She befriends the local knitting group and intends to purchase the castle where her father formerly worked as a groundskeeper, only to clash with the sourduke who owns the property. It happens again, but this time it happens in a castle. The appearances of Mrs. Donatelli and Frank from The Princess Switch are the highlight, but that’s about all I can say about it.
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018)
Director: John Schultz
The title of this film itself is my main complaint with it. Prince Richard (Ben Lamb) has been anointed King of Aldovia at the conclusion of the first film. Why then is this film still referred to as A Christmas Prince? Despite the title, this sequel is quite ridiculous. One year after the events of the previous movie, Amber is having trouble balancing her new royal responsibilities with maintaining her blog (a highly essential aspect of this film, for some odd reason). Richard is coping with the nation’s financial difficulties while also facing significant political backlash from the Aldovian people. Amber, a professional blogger and soon-to-be queen, decides to don her investigative journalism hat once more and investigate the missing funds. The portrayal of Amber as a serious reporter is the funniest element of this film, especially when she writes the term “fishy” in her tiny notepad in a scene. Be serious, please!
A Christmas Prince (2017)
Director: Alex Zamm
A Christmas Prince, the first instalment in the series, shows the beginnings of Amber and Richard’s relationship. As a budding journalist seeking her big break, Amber starts off. Prince Richard is not present at the press conference, so she is dispatched to Aldovia to cover it. Amber decides that simply won’t do and ends up poking around the palace where she is mistaken for the young princess’s American teacher, Martha. Aha! She sees the situation as an opportunity for undercover reporting and decides to play along in order to learn the hidden Aldovian secrets. That no one checks her credentials is perplexing, but anything to advance the romance. Then there is our male protagonist. Richard, who is infamously derided by the public as a careless playboy, ends up having a heart. Shocking! Richard and Amber begin to fall in love at some point, and Amber struggles with how to tell him the truth. This is the only one of the three Christmas Prince movies that feels reasonably seamless. The original is really impossible to top.
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby (2019)
Director: John Schultz
We are now entering the meat of the trilogy. The third Christmas Prince film is by far the silliest in the series. This film has a lot going on: Queen Amber (Rose McIver) is expecting, Aldovia is deeply in debt to the rest of the world, and the kingdom’s peace pact has vanished. If the agreement isn’t located and signed by Christmas, the royal baby will be subject to a fatal curse! It has every high-stakes component required for a fantastic—er, decent—whodunit mystery. The most astonishing part of the entire movie is how Amber manages to maintain her blog while the mayhem is going on while still using her journalistic chops.
Christmas Inheritance (2017)
Director: Ernie Barbarash
Prior to The White Lotus, Jake Lacy appeared in Christmas Inheritance. The premise of this film has been exploited way too often and doesn’t inherently make it something special. With just $100 to her name, wealthy socialite Ellen Langford (Eliza Taylor) heads to her father’s New England birthplace to covertly send a holiday letter. She gets to know Jake (Lacy), the innkeeper of Snow Falls, and develops a close relationship with him and his aunt Debbie (Andie MacDowell). Other than the fact that I really like it, there is no reason at all why Christmas Inheritance should be so high on my list. The movie serves you sheer comfort and happiness while embracing all the best aspects of Christmas as a holiday. Additionally, Andie MacDowell, who is an exquisite treasure, is a wonderful presence in this film.
Christmas with You (2022)
Director: Gabriela Tagliavini
The fact that Freddie Prinze Jr. is back in rom-coms should be cause for celebration, but Christmas with You is a disappointing omission. Prinze portrays a single DILF with a daughter who is fixated on the burnt-out pop singer Angelina (Aimee Garcia). She flees to a small New York town under pressure to write a popular Christmas song to restore her image, where she eventually stays with Miguel (Prinze) and his daughter. Angelina and Miguel decide to collaborate on the song, and they develop a bond over their shared love of music. Another good idea, but poorly carried out. This film is similar to a terrible Marry Me (2022): In addition to having poor chemistry, the music is also subpar. The costumes and decorations in Christmas with You are likewise a tad excessive. Even for the most ardent Christmas fans like myself, there is a veritable vomit of red and green in almost every scene. Another misstep!
Falling For Christmas (2022)
Director: Janeen Damian
In her triumphant comeback to the big screen, Lindsay Lohan gives the performance of a lifetime as a snooty heiress who loses all memory of who she is and slides down a ski slope. In Chord Overstreet’s North Star Lodge, she finds solace, and the two of them grow more and more enamoured of one another. With the addition of the amnesia plotline, Falling For Christmas is almost an exact replica of Christmas Inheritance. The movie also t akes great pleasure in referencing Lindsay Lohan’s classic performances, including a delightfully vintage Mean Girls reference in which she sings “Jingle Bell Rock,” which causes fans to ecstatically point at the screen. Overstreet, who appears to have lost all of his acting skills since Glee, is the worst letdown in the film. His demeanour comes out as underdeveloped and half-baked, and Mr. Trouty Mouth doesn’t really seem to give him much of a personality. When the male lead is so painfully adequate in comparison, it is difficult to support the primary pair. However, Falling for Christmas is a joyful addition to Lohan’s rom-com canon and unquestionably one of the finer Christmas films on Netflix.
Holidate (2020)
Director: John Whitesell
If it features nearly all of the major holidays, is it a Christmas movie? Holidate poses this inquiry. In any case, the film is Netflix’s holiday raunch-com offering. Sloane (Emma Roberts) and Jackson (Luke Bracey) are two single strangers who agree to be each other’s platonic plus one at every significant holiday event while standing in line for returns at a mall, of all places. a “holidate,” to use your term. We certainly witness every festive event, boy. Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, and even Cinco de Mayo come to mind. It’s a somewhat interesting and holiday-themed twist on the standard rom-com template (see Hulu’s 2019 movie Plus One), and it offers a refreshing change of pace from the other, more formulaic holiday films available on the streaming service.
Holiday in the Wild (2019)
Director: Ernie Barbarash
You should at least try to include Christmas more thoroughly into your story if you’re going to advertise yourself as a holiday film. Without the enjoyable holiday magic, it just feels like any other terrible rom-com. Another white saviour film, Holiday in the Wild is set in Africa this time. Kate (Kristin Davis) embarks on a solo safari trip to Zambia after learning that her husband wants a divorce, where she meets pilot Derek (Rob Lowe). The two come across a distressed young elephant while flying to a different resort and take it with them back to the rescue facility. Even though Kate’s only prior expertise as a veterinarian consisted of treating only dogs and cats, she manages to persuade her way into a position working with the elephants. She extends her original vacation to last for a few more months through Christmas, and she takes use of this opportunity to get to know Derek better. Feel free to ignore this one as well since there isn’t much happening in it besides the elephants.
Let It Snow (2019)
Director: Luke Snellin
Let It Snow, which is based on a book by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle, is essentially a YA adaptation of Love Actually. The movie features three seemingly interconnected plotlines that all take place on Christmas Eve in a tiny town: Between Julie (Isabela Merced) and Stuart Bale (Shameik Moore), there is a typical girl/pop star story; between Tobin (Mitchell Hope), Angie (Kiernan Shipka), and JP (Matthew Noszka), there is a love triangle; and between cheerleader Kerry (Anna Akana) and waitress Dorrie, there is a covert relationship (Liv Hewson). In addition, Joan Cusack plays a charming tow truck driver who travels with Addie, Dorrie’s best friend (Odeya Rush). Let It Snow is yet another entertaining deviation from Netflix’s typical rom-com formula, featuring people who are sincere, kind, and even (some) complex. Considering how much the streaming service adores youthful romance, it’s also the only YA rom-com in the group.
Love Hard (2021)
Director: Hernán Jiménez
Netflix’s effort to capture dating in the internet age is Love Hard. Thanks to the Flirt Alert app, Natalie (Nina Dobrev), a Los Angeles journalist, is caught in a never-ending loop of disastrous dates. Only her popular column “Always a Bridesmaid,” which her readers and editor adore, has benefitted from her unsuccessful amorous endeavours. She broadens the scope of her quest for Mr. Right and eventually matches with someone she considers to be her hot soul mate. She flies across the nation to spend Christmas with his family in an effort to surprise him, only to find out that her ideal partner “Josh” has actually been catfishing her. In a real world, the movie would finish here because there is no way to recover from being catfished. But Love Hard continues to advance. Instead, Real Josh (Jimmy O. Yang) persuades Natalie to pose as his girlfriend for a week in front of his family so that he may set her up with Tag, his closest friend who is also the man whose image he had been exploiting (Darren Barnet). The movie makes a lot of effort to cover up its murky morals, most notably by giving both Natalie and Josh dubious characteristics. Love Hard manages to remain unexpectedly compassionate even during its most embarrassing scenes.
Operation Christmas Drop (2020)
Director: Martin Wood
Nothing says Christmas like… propaganda from the military? The only sincere aspect of Operation Christmas Drop is that it is (very) loosely based on a real-life U.S. Air Force humanitarian effort of the same name. The task of gathering proof to support the closing of a tropical Air Force post in Guam is given to congressional assistant Erica Miller (Kat Graham). She meets Captain Andrew Jantz (Alexander Ludwig), who tries to disprove her and shows her around the base, there.
The idea is sound, but it’s hard to think of it as entertaining when so much of it revolves around romanticising the American military installations on the island. The white saviorism and the demeaning portrayal of Guam indigenous as savage and wholly disrespectful. Despite the propaganda, this isn’t even entertaining to watch! Almost hardly a holiday film! It’s a disgrace to the well-known enemies-to-lovers cliche that the leads have no chemistry. There is hardly any narrative development that supports the plausibility of their relationship. not to mention how they managed to work in a CGI gecko into the narrative? It’s a total mess; I urge you to use Operation Christmas. Remove it entirely from your list of things to watch.
Single All The Way (2021)
Director: Michael Mayer
Netflix last year decided to make a gay holiday movie after a tiresome number of generic straight holiday romances. In the movie Single All the Way, Peter (Michael Urie) invites Nick (Philemon Chambers), his roommate and best friend, to spend the holiday with him in New Hampshire. The two have untapped chemistry, so the family begins meddling and planning methods to bring them together for the holidays. Single All the Way is especially endearing because it embraces its corniness. It’s good that Single All The Way forgoes that as a plot possibility and instead chooses to depict queer romance in a way that seems comfortable, especially since so many LGBTQ+ films (such as Happiest Season) depend on coming out as part of the plotline. There is a reason for clichés, and they shouldn’t only be used by straight couples.
The Holiday Calendar (2018)
Director: Bradley Walsh
The only other actress to have participated in two distinct Netflix Christmas movies, besides Vanessa Hudgens, is Kat Graham. Graham portrays Abby, a Christmas-hating elf and aspiring photographer, in the movie The Holiday Calendar. One year, Abby’s grandfather (Ron Cephas-Jones) gives her a mystical Advent calendar that, as the items it shows each day start to correlate with events in her life, begins to prophesy the future. It might be endearing, and the friendship between Abby and her best friend Josh (Quincy Brown) is particularly endearing. But because the film is primarily a bore, it isn’t enough to make it memorable.
The Knight Before Christmas (2019)
Director: Monika Mitchell
The Knight Before Christmas succeeds in bringing a sense of newness to the most overused fish-out-of-water rom-com trope. Even though there is only one Vanessa Hudgens this time around (despite the fact that all the overlapping plot lines seem to place this film in the same universe as The Princess Switch), there is definitely room for crossover! Hudgens portrays Brooke, a typical science teacher who nearly literally drives the main character’s male counterpart over with her car. Josh Whitehouse’s Sir Cole is the male lead, not just any male lead. A 14th-century knight named Sir Cole is transported to the present-day state of Ohio to perform an unspecified quest after running with an old crone. Everyone sort of assumes that Sir Cole is experiencing some form of amnesia because no other explanation makes sense for why a bumbling grown man acting like a mediaeval knight without any form of identification. The strange man accepts Brooke’s offer of her guest accommodation, and he engages in the silliest technological antics. He has a one-sided argument with Brooke’s Alexa, which is humorous enough to almost make up for the sleazy commercial placement. This movie offers all you need for a good time as a holiday romance. Himbos! Time travel! Leading ladies in romance with real chemistry! The movie The Knight Before Christmas is unique because it is highly fantastical and devoid of any sense of reality.
The Noel Diary (2022)
Director: Charles Shyer
The Noel Diary, which is based on the same-named novel by Richard Paul Evans, is much more dramatic than comic. Famous author Jake, played by Justin Hartley, visits his hometown to settle his mother’s estate. A mystery woman named Rachel (Barrett Doss), who just so happens to be Jake’s former nanny, is looking for her birth mother when he meets her. They decide to take a road trip to visit Jake’s father, who is the only person who might know anything about her. The Noel Diary tries a little bit too hard to be sincere, whereas most Netflix Christmas rom-coms fit pretty well into a category of excessive sweetness. Although it’s perfectly good that the romance in the movie is set aside for the main family arc, it makes their eventual union feel especially disappointing. When viewers have so little to work with, it’s difficult to support the pair. Along with the story’s additional infidelity subplot, of course.
The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020)
Director: Mike Rohl
Nothing quite captures the spirit of the holiday season like three Vanessa Hudgenses. In the second Princess Switch film, Fiona, a cousin of Margaret, has a role. Fiona and her henchmen plan to kidnap Margaret since they are completely out of money so that she can use the money from the Montenaro crime family to write herself a sizable cheque that will cover her expenses for the rest of her life. Given that this is yet another holiday rom-com that features financial crime, it appears that Netflix is particularly like Christmas movies that investigate economic malfeasance. Fiona’s strategy appears to be straightforward, but there’s a catch: Margaret actually is Stacy! Stacy gets up in difficulty because the two agreed to trade places once more in an effort to restore the friendship between Kevin (Nick Sagar) and Margaret. The Princess Switch: Switched Again is hilariously screwed up, as Hudgens keeps acting in the most ridiculous ways for her three different characters. Additionally, the final scene features quick cameos by Queen Amber and King Ben, which is a delightful addition. Identify this film for what it is: camp!
The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star (2021)
Director: Mike Rohl
The Princess Switch trilogy is arguably Netflix’s best and most chaotic franchise to date. Though it’s bad, the third movie manages to be absurd enough without including a fourth Vanessa Hudgens character. The extravagant Fiona steals the show in Romancing the Star. Stacy and Margaret recruit the aid of Fiona, who is on probation at the orphanage as a result of the bizarre events of the second movie, after Montenaro’s revered Star of Peace is stolen. In order to solve the issue, Fiona links up with her ex-boyfriend Peter Maxwell (Remy Hii), a former Interpol agent who now owns a private security company, and the movie bizarrely deviates into the realm of espionage heists. The third Princess Switch fully abandons all tone for the sake of being completely ludicrous, but still manages to remain boring, much like the Christmas Prince series. Every second is a terrible drag since there are simply too many subplots that absolutely obscure the narrative. Hudgens’ English accent is still godawful, but I admire her dedication to the role.
The Princess Switch (2018)
Director: Mike Rohl
I know this is going to be controversial, but I really feel that The Princess Switch is one of the greatest Christmas rom-coms ever made. Let me make my case. Stacy de Novo, played by Vanessa Hudgens, is a pastry chef from Chicago who travels to the fictitious nation of Belgravia for a major baking competition. She runs across Vanessa Hudgens #2, Lady Margaret Delacourt, Duchess of Montenaro, who is engaged to Crown Prince Edward of Belgravia (Sam Palladio). Vanessa #1 is persuaded to trade places with Vanessa #2 until the competition because Vanessa #2 needs a break from the spotlight, which totally excuses Vanessa #1’s unattractive British accent. What a fantastic literary flaw! Anyway, the two Vanessas start to develop feelings for each other’s individual lives, giving us two Christmas romances to care about. The Parent Trap, a 1999 smash blockbuster movie directed by Nancy Meyers, is strongly reminiscent of the secret handshake the two Vanessas share. I hate a good reference! All of this serves to highlight how lovely, joyful, and downright goofy The Princess Switch is. A better film has not yet been released on Netflix. Yes, it is Switchmas.
