Pop star Angelina (Aimee Garcia) finds festive inspiration (and love) in unexpected places in Christmas With You – here’s our review.
Ah, November. The season of early mince pies, grumbling about the weather, and 90-minute Christmas films rated U for “language.”
For fans of the latter, Netflix are hoping to capture the festive spirit early with Christmas With You, a title I am incapable of keeping in my head for longer than it takes to say it. As that might suggest, the result is a movie determined not to rock any boats, but that instead joins the legion of festive flicks filed under “films you can build a gingerbread house to.”
Aimee Garcia plays Angelina Costa, a pop star in a bit of a rut. With her career under threat from Nicolette Stephanie Templier’s Cheri Bibi and her ability to make TikToks, Angelina promises to write a new Christmas hit for an upcoming charity gala. But when a snowstorm leaves her stranded with teenage mega-fan Cristina (Deja Monique Cruz) and her single music teacher dad (hello, Freddie Prinze Jr.), will she be able to write a hit in time for the big show, and—more importantly—learn to love Christmas again while she’s at it?
It’s not hard to see why Netflix snatched this one up. If a jolly scientist in a lab cooked up the purest sample of “straight to streaming Christmas movie,” it would probably look something like this. There’s the odd moment when the tiniest glimmer of self-awareness might break the cinnamon-scented spell, and anyone not already imbued with the Christmas spirit might find it a tad insufferable, but apart from that (and a couple of genuine chortles) Christmas With You does exactly what it says on the Quality Street tin.
If that sounds like the sort of thing you need right now, drag that Christmas tree out of the attic and renew your Netflix subscription—you’ll have a lovely afternoon. Sure, the script’s a little on-the-nose, the lighting’s a bit, um, variable, and the sets look like the front cover of a winter NEXT catalogue. But the plot ticks all the boxes you could ask it to, Garcia and Prinze have enough chemistry to keep things chugging along nicely, and Socorro Santiago is a fun addition as Cristina’s telenovela-obsessed grandmother.
And if you can’t enjoy those things in November, when can you?
Christmas With You is streaming on Netflix now. — Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website: Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here. Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here. Become a Patron here.
