Champagne Problems Critique – Netflix’s Latest Christmas Romantic Comedy Lacks Fizz.
Without wanting to come across as the Grinch, one must lament the early release of holiday movies before Thanksgiving. While temperatures drop, it seems premature to completely immerse in the platform’s annual buffet of low-cost festive treats.
Like American chocolates that no longer contain real chocolate, the service’s Christmas films are counted on for their style of mediocrity. They provide rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, low budgets, artificial winter scenes, and absurd premises. At worst, these films are forgettable train wrecks; at best, they are forgettable fun.
Champagne Problems, the latest Christmas offering, disappears into the broad center of the forgettable spectrum. Helmed by the filmmaker, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this film feels like low-quality champagne – appropriately flat and situational.
It begins with what appears to be a computer-made commercial for drug store brand champagne. This commercial is actually the proposal of the main character, played by the actress, to her colleagues at a financial firm. Sydney is the stereotypical image of a career woman – overlooked, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the harm of her personal life. When her boss dispatches her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over Christmas, her sibling insists she take one night in the city to enjoy life.
Naturally, the French capital is the perfect place to pull someone from Google Maps, even when the city is covered in below-grade CGI snow. At a absurdly cutesy bookstore, Sydney has a charming encounter with Henri Cassell, and he pulls her away from her phone. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she initially resists this ideal guy for silly reasons.
Equally as expected are the movie mechanics that proceed at sudden shifts, reflecting the rotation of old sparkling wine in the cellars of the family vineyard. The twist? The love interest is the heir to the estate, reluctant to run it and bitter toward his father for selling it. In perhaps the film’s biggest addition to the genre, he is extremely judgmental of private equity. The conflict? Sydney truly thinks she’s not stripping this family-owned company for parts, competing against three caricatures: a stern Frenchwoman, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The twist? Her skeevy coworker Ryan shows up unannounced. The grist? Henri and Sydney look yearningly at each other in holiday pajamas, across a vast chasm in economic worldview.
The gift and the curse is that nothing here lingers longer than a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There is no real absorbent filler – the lead actress, most famous for her part in Friday Night Lights, gives a merely adequate performance, all sweet surfaces and gestures of care, almost motherly than love interest material. The male star provides just the right amount of Gallic appeal with mild self-torture and nothing more. The tricks are not amusing, the romance is inoffensive, and the happy-ever-after is straightforward.
Despite its waxing poetic on the luxury of champagne, nobody claims it is anything but a mainstream product. The flaws are the very reasons some enjoy it. It’s fair to say an expert’s opinion about the film a champagne problem.
- The Holiday Film can be streamed on the platform.
