Champagne Problems Critique – The Streaming Giant’s Newest Holiday Romantic Comedy Lacks Fizz.
At the risk of sound like the Grinch, one must lament the premature release of Christmas movies before Thanksgiving. Even as temperatures drop, it feels premature to fully indulge in the platform’s yearly feast of cheap holiday treats.
Like American chocolates that no longer include real chocolate, the service’s holiday movies are relied upon for their brand of mediocrity. They offer rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, low budgets, fake snow, and unbelievable plots. In the worst cases, these movies are unmemorable disasters; at best, they are lighthearted distractions.
Champagne Problems, the latest holiday concoction, blends into the broad center of unremarkable territory. Helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.
The story starts with what appears to be an AI-generated ad for supermarket sparkling wine. This ad is actually the pitch of the main character, portrayed by Minka Kelly, to her colleagues at the Roth Group. Sydney is the construction paper cut-out of a career woman – overlooked, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the detriment of her private world. After her superior dispatches her to Paris to close a deal over Christmas, her sibling makes her promise take one night in the city to live for herself.
Of course, the French capital is the perfect place to pull someone from digital navigation, even when Paris is covered in below-grade CGI snow. At a absurdly cutesy bookstore, the lead meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, and he distracts her from her device. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she initially resists this perfect man for silly reasons.
Just as predictable are the film elements that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, reflecting the turning of aging champagne bottles in the vaults of the family vineyard. The catch? The love interest is the heir to the estate, reluctant to manage it and bitter toward his father for selling it. Maybe the movie’s most salient contribution to romantic comedies, he is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The problem? Sydney truly thinks she’s not dismantling this family-owned company for profit, vying against three stereotypical rivals: a severe French grand dame, a rigid German, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.
The development? Sydney’s skeevy coworker the office rival appears unannounced. The core? The two leads look yearningly at each other in holiday pajamas, across a vast chasm in economic worldview.
The upside and downside is that nothing here sticks longer than a bubbly buzz on an unfilled belly. There is no substantial content – the lead actress, still best known for her role in the TV series, delivers a merely adequate portrayal, superficially pleasant and acts of kindness, more maternal than love interest material. The male star provides exactly the dollop of Gallic appeal with light inner conflict and nothing more. The gimmicks are unfunny, the love story is inoffensive, and the ending is predictable.
Despite its waxing poetic on the exclusivity of champagne, nobody claims it is anything other than a mainstream product. The flaws are also the things to like. One might call a critic’s feelings about the film a champagne problem.
- The Holiday Film can be streamed on the platform.
