Champagne Problems Review – Netflix’s Newest Christmas Romcom Lacks Fizz.
Without wanting to sound like the Grinch, it’s hard not to bemoan the premature release of holiday films prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. Even as temperatures drop, it seems too soon to fully indulge in Netflix’s yearly buffet of cheap holiday treats.
Like US candy which don’t contain real chocolate, the service’s Christmas films are relied upon for their style of mediocrity. They provide rote familiarity – familiar actors, modest spending, artificial winter scenes, and absurd premises. In the worst cases, these movies are forgettable train wrecks; at best, they are forgettable fun.
Champagne Problems, the newest Christmas offering, blends into the vast middle of the forgettable spectrum. Directed by the filmmaker, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.
It begins with what appears to be a computer-made commercial for supermarket sparkling wine. This commercial is actually the proposal of the main character, portrayed by the actress, to her coworkers at a financial firm. The protagonist is the construction paper cut-out of a career woman – underestimated, phone-obsessed, and driven to the harm of her personal life. When her superior dispatches her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over Christmas, her sibling makes her promise spend an evening in Paris to live for herself.
Of course, Paris is the perfect place to wrest one away from digital navigation, despite the city is covered in unconvincing digital snowfall. In an absurdly cutesy bookshop, the lead meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, who distracts her from her device. As demanded by the genre, she initially resists this perfect man for frivolous excuses.
Just as predictable are the film elements that unfold at sudden shifts, mirroring the turning of aging champagne bottles in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The catch? The love interest is the successor to the estate, hesitant to run it and resentful toward his dad for selling it. In perhaps the movie’s biggest addition to romantic comedies, he is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The problem? The heroine truly thinks she’s not dismantling the ancestral business for profit, vying against three stereotypical rivals: a severe French grand dame, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The development? Her skeevy coworker Ryan shows up without warning. The core? Henri and Sydney look yearningly at each other in festive sleepwear, across a huge divide in economic worldview.
The upside and downside is that none of this sticks longer than a short-lived thrill on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of real absorbent filler – the lead actress, still best known for her part in Friday Night Lights, delivers a merely adequate portrayal, superficially pleasant and acts of kindness, more maternal than romantic lead. Tom Wozniczka offers exactly the dollop of French charm with mild self-torture and nothing more. The tricks are unfunny, the romance is harmless, and the happy-ever-after is straightforward.
Despite its philosophizing on the exclusivity of champagne, no one is pretending it is anything other than a mass market item. The flaws are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about the film a minor issue.
- The Holiday Film is now available on the platform.
