Champagne Problems Critique – Netflix’s Newest Holiday Romantic Comedy Misses the Sparkle.
At the risk of sound like a holiday cynic, one must lament the premature release of Christmas movies before Thanksgiving. While the weather cools, it seems premature to completely immerse in the platform’s yearly buffet of low-cost holiday treats.
Like US candy which don’t include real chocolate, the service’s Christmas movies are counted on for their style of badness. They offer rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, modest spending, fake snow, and unbelievable plots. At worst, these movies are forgettable train wrecks; at best, they are lighthearted distractions.
The new Netflix film, the latest Christmas offering, blends into the broad center of unremarkable territory. Helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose last Netflix romcom was so disposable, this movie feels like low-quality champagne – fittingly lackluster and situational.
It begins with what appears to be an AI-generated ad for supermarket sparkling wine. This ad is actually the pitch of Sydney Price, played by the actress, to her colleagues at the Roth Group. Sydney is the stereotypical image of a career woman – underestimated, constantly on her device, and driven to the harm of her personal life. When her boss sends her to France to finalize an acquisition over the holidays, her sibling insists she take one night in Paris to enjoy life.
Of course, Paris is the ideal location to pull someone from Google Maps, despite the city is draped with below-grade CGI snow. At a overly quaint bookshop, Sydney has a charming encounter with the male lead, who pulls her away from her phone. As demanded by the genre, Sydney at first rejects this perfect man for silly reasons.
Equally as expected are the movie mechanics that unfold at abrupt quarter turns, reflecting the turning of aging champagne bottles in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The twist? Henri is the successor to Chateau Cassel, hesitant to manage it and resentful toward his father for putting it up for sale. In perhaps the movie’s most salient contribution to the genre, Henri is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The problem? The heroine truly thinks she’s not stripping the ancestral business for profit, competing against three stereotypical rivals: a stern Frenchwoman, a rigid German, and a delusional gay billionaire.
The development? Sydney’s skeevy coworker the office rival shows up without warning. The core? Henri and Sydney gaze longingly at each other in festive sleepwear, across a vast chasm in financial perspective.
The gift and the curse is that nothing here sticks longer than a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of real absorbent filler – the lead actress, most famous for her part in Friday Night Lights, gives a strictly serviceable performance, all sweet surfaces and acts of kindness, more maternal than romantic lead. Tom Wozniczka offers just the right amount of French charm with mild self-torture and little else. The tricks are unfunny, the love story is harmless, and the ending is straightforward.
Despite its waxing poetic on the exclusivity of champagne, nobody claims this is anything other than a mainstream product. The flaws are the very reasons some enjoy it. One might call a critic’s feelings about the film a minor issue.
- Champagne Problems is now available on Netflix.
