Netflix And Chill: Holidate (2020)

Emma Roberts is Sloane, a young woman who dreads any holiday dates in the calendar year, because it is the time for her to be questioned and judged by her family. Luke Bracey is Jackson, a young man we first see caught up in an absolute nightmare of a Christmas scenario with a girlfriend who obviously takes things a lot more seriously than he does. When the two meet up in a queue, while returning unwanted gifts, they realise that they share a very similar problem, and come up with a plan to be a supportive partner for one another during holidays. A holidate. Nothing serious, no need to keep in touch for the rest of the year, just an arrangement that works for both of them. So you know it's going to get a bit messy.

Although I didn't think I was familiar with any work from director John Whitesell (who has done a lot of TV and *shudder* the sequels to Big Momma's House), it turns out that he pleasantly surprised me years ago with Malibu's Most Wanted. I'm not going to highly recommend that to anyone, but I will say that it was better than I expected it to be. And the same goes for Holidate, which is a predictable rom-com with the added appeal of holiday celebrations and foul-mouthed outbursts. It's an enjoyably bawdy film with two lead characters who are enjoyably just a step removed from the perfect humans we usually see in these situations. They're still pretty great, but at least the screw up occasionally.

Writer Tiffany Paulsen started her career with the 2007 Nancy Drew movie, which also starred Emma Roberts, and has a small filmography made up of movies that seem to be mainly aimed at teenaged girls (including a TV movie remake of Adventures In Babysitting that I was unaware of). She knows what to do with these characters, focusing on the main plot and fun dialogue over any main set-pieces (although someone losing a finger provides quite the amusing highlight).

Roberts and Bracey are wonderful together, with the former doing her usual eye-rolling schtick and the latter being a nice guy who enjoys being refreshingly honest with the new woman in his life. Frances Fisher is the pushy mother, Kristin Chenoweth is an aunt who always has a different man for different holidays, and Manish Dayal is Faarooq, a handsome doctor that Sloane's mother wants her to date. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, and Chenoweth and Dayal get to share some scenes that should guarantee one or two extra chuckles. Jessica Capshaw and Andrew Bachelor help to fill out the main cast, although their characters have a third act sub-plot that feels a bit out of place and unnecessary.

If you like Roberts onscreen, and I do, then this is a fun film for her to lead. It sits well within her comfort zone, and it's also a great showcase for the charm and appeal of Bracey. If you like your rom-com sweetness with just a little bit of bitter mixer then this is definitely recommended.

7/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Deck The Halls (2006)

Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick star in this disappointing Christmas comedy as two neighbours who end up upsetting each other. It's a tale of escalating rivalry that's been done a number of times before (in a number of better movies) but it suffers from having central characters that it's hard to care for and being more predictable than a Christmas cracker gag.

Broderick plays Steve Finch, an optician, a pillar of the community and an all-round good guy. Kristin Davis plays his wife and they have two normal kids, one teenage daughter (Alia Shawkat) who is unhappy while she tries to show how she's growing into a woman and one younger boy (Dylan Blue) who acts more depressed in the run up to Christmas to bag himself some better presents. Christmas is a busy time for the Finch family with a lot to do and traditions to uphold. That's all thrown into disarray by the arrival of a new neighbour, Buddy Hall (DeVito). Buddy has his lovely wife (Kristin Chenoweth) and two stylish and beautiful teenage daughters (Kelly and Sabrina Aldridge). While Steve and Buddy don't exactly hit it off right away, things start to get a lot worse when Buddy gets the idea in his head to decorate his house with enough Christmas lights to enable his house to be seen from outer space.

Written by Matt Corman, Chris Ord and Don Rhymer, Deck The Halls is almost consistently unfunny. Broderick and DeVito aren't served well at all by the script. I get the point that the characters are supposed to become blinded by their single-minded quests for their own interpretation of Christmas perfection but it's a shame that they had to be assholes for almost every scene. Luckily, the women fare much better and Kristin Davis and Kristin Chenoweth have a few good scenes together and make up for the irritation of the men. To be fair, DeVito has moments when he actually manages to do okay but Broderick never gives anything more than a very weak rehashing of his performance in Election. He was good in that movie, thanks to the obsession of his character being ever so slightly understandable, but it doesn't work this time around.

Director John Whitesell fumbles everything from start to finish. The movie should kick into gear when the two main men meet up near the start but, instead, it starts to sink down into a quagmire of its own lazy mess. The set-pieces in particular (a family photo that's interrupted, a trip to the family Christmas tree lot, an attempt by Steve to cut the supply powering the lights of his neighbour, a speed skating race) are all disappointing and end up boring the hell out of the viewer instead of raising the entertainment levels. Which makes this movie far from the top of the Christmas tree.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Deck-The-Halls-Danny-Devito/dp/B000V7ZMKU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354372181&sr=8-1