Sneaking in simply earlier than the fleet of purple Coca-Cola vehicles comes barreling into city, it’s the arrival of Netflix’s made-for-pittance festive lineup, a vacation custom that’s equally unhealthy on your enamel. In 2023, it was kicked off by the deceptively titled Finest. Christmas. Ever!, a rotten nadir not only for the style however for movie as a complete final yr, and so the superbly competent Meet Me Subsequent Christmas lands with a decent shrug. Issues have been, and undoubtedly will get, worse within the streamer’s most overstuffed subgenre, so inoffensively watchable will do.
Its low-level success is partly all the way down to Chappelle’s Present director Rusty Cundieff and largely down to steer Christina Milian, the one-time R&B star who has grow to be a staple of the cheapo romcom, first on ABC Household with Snowglobe and Christmas Cupid earlier than graduating to Netflix with Falling Inn Love and the surprisingly satisfying Resort to Love. She’s been an entertainer of some kind for the reason that age of 15 and there’s a safe-hands ease to her efficiency right here, securing us on aspect early on. Like quite a lot of these movies, the plot is constructed from stolen blocks, this time they arrive from 2001’s John Cusack/Kate Beckinsale romcom Serendipity and Arnie’s 1996 youngsters caper Jingle All of the Means. It cribs the magical meet-cute of the previous and companions it with the aggravating scramble of the latter, because the romantic way forward for Milian’s Layla may rely upon whether or not or not she will be able to land a ticket to a sold-out live performance.
Within the first scene, her journey to New York for Christmas is interrupted by a snowstorm that lands her within the lounge subsequent to a good-looking stranger (Women Journey’s Kofi Siriboe). As they flirt, she tells him of her festive ritual, going to see tacky a cappella group Pentatonix along with her good-looking boyfriend. As they half, he means that in the event that they’re each single subsequent yr they need to meet on the live performance. A yr later, reeling from being cheated on, she’s decided to discover a ticket so she will be able to meet him once more, enlisting the assistance of a concierge firm. She’s matched with, you might need guessed, a good-looking helper (former NFL participant Devale Ellis) and so they’re despatched on a manic search throughout New York.
Besides, as you additionally might need guessed, it’s probably not New York however slightly a really recognisable Toronto as an alternative and whereas the general corner-cutting cheapness is perhaps extra distracting in one other Netflix part (like in final week’s rubbishy trying teen slasher Time Minimize), the chintz is a part of the allure right here. These movies are, in any case, modelled on Hallmark’s micro-budget vary (you possibly can nearly really feel a number of fade-to-blacks for industrial breaks).
Cundieff helps it really feel mild on its ft and, apart from one vastly unfunny comedian interlude involving a wealthy couple with a ticket, Molly Haldeman and Camilla Rubis’s script is refreshingly not annoying. Milian is charmingly sport and has respectable chemistry with Ellis even when their movie typically feels much less like a romcom and extra like both a wierd Pentatonix tour advert or a harmful Pentatonix ingesting sport (a shot of eggnog each time somebody says Pentatonix will kill you earlier than Christmas). It doesn’t really feel like anybody in the true world would care or ever has cared this a lot about one among their live shows however then this movie doesn’t exist in the true world and who would count on or need it to. It exists in Netflix festive film world, an ever-expanding place of ever-diminishing returns, and whereas this gained’t be a movie somebody would contemplate returning to subsequent Christmas, it’ll nearly do for now.
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