Netflix—or a very shrewd someone at Netflix—has wisely entered the holiday movie thunderdome, and honestly, it’s become a worthy rival to Lifetime, Hallmark, et al. with its wealth of extremely silly festive content. But will any of this year’s holiday titles be as memorable as 2019's Holiday In The Wild, aka the movie where Kristin Davis is abruptly dumped and heads off for a You Go Girl vacation where she falls for Rob Lowe’s pilot when they rescue baby elephants in ZAMBIA?! Let’s find out!
“Halloween Trees” have become a thing and everything else in this year is so stupid anyway, so why not start Christmas in fucking OCTOBER with Holidate, which premieres on October 28 and stars Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey, and actually seems fine:
Sloane (Emma Roberts) and Jackson (Luke Bracey) hate the holidays. They constantly find themselves single, sitting at the kids table, or stuck with awkward dates. But when these two strangers meet one particularly bad Christmas, they make a pact to be each other’s “holidate” for every festive occasion throughout the next year. With a mutual disdain for the holidays, and assuring themselves that they have no romantic interest in the other, they make the perfect team. However, as a year of absurd celebrations come to an end, Sloane and Jackson find that sharing everything they hate may just prove to be something they unexpectedly love.
See, that’s how Netflix gets you, though. It just eases you into these shenanigans with a vanilla-ass rom-com. The true terror begins on November 5 with Operation Christmas Drop, which sounds like Operation Dumbo Drop but with more blatant military propaganda:
Chasing a promotion, congressional aide Erica Miller forgoes family Christmas to travel across the Pacific at her boss’s behest. Upon landing at a beachside Air Force base, she clashes with her guide, Captain Andrew Jantz, who knows her assignment is finding reasons to defund the facility. The pilot’s pet project — Operation: Christmas Drop, a genuine, decades-old tradition where gifts and supplies are parachuted to residents of remote neighboring islands — has lawmakers wondering if his unit has too much spare energy. Despite their initial opposing goals, Erica softens once she experiences the customs and communal spirit of Andrew’s adopted home.
Holiday Home Makeover With Mr. Christmas is not an original film but a reality series with a description that sounds like Actual Hell. The short version: this guy is an interior decorator obsessed with Christmas and he’s about to fuck some living rooms UP.
Benjamin Bradley, best known as Mr. Christmas, is a veteran in the interior design industry with a healthy obsession with the holiday season. For Mr. Christmas, the holidays are all about celebrating love, life, family and friends through meaningful traditions. In the new Netflix series Holiday Home Makeover with Mr. Christmas, Bradley takes you behind the scenes as he puts his design expertise and vast Christmas collection to good use. Equipped with lights, garlands, and enough tinsel to blanket the North Pole, he and his team of elves work around the clock to bring holiday cheer to families and communities deserving of a home makeover for the most joyous time of year. Mr. Christmas invites viewers along for the ride to kick off the holiday season and get inspired to take their own home decorating and traditions to the next level.
Maybe the only thing you need to know about Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (dear lord) is that Forest Whitaker plays a “legendary toymaker” named JERONICUS JANGLE. Honestly, this one could go either way—meaning it could be awesomely bad or genuinely kind of fun, and Keegan-Michael Key’s involvement tips the scales in the favor of the latter. This one premieres on November 13:
A musical adventure and a visual spectacle for the ages, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is a wholly fresh and spirited family holiday event. Set in the gloriously vibrant town of Cobbleton, the film follows legendary toymaker Jeronicus Jangle (Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker) whose fanciful inventions burst with whimsy and wonder. But when his trusted apprentice (Emmy winner Keegan-Michael Key) steals his most prized creation, it’s up to his equally bright and inventive granddaughter (newcomer Madalen Mills) — and a long-forgotten invention — to heal old wounds and reawaken the magic within. From the imagination of writer-director David E. Talbert and featuring original songs by John Legend, Philip Lawrence, Davy Nathan, and “This Day” performed by Usher and Kiana Ledé, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey reminds us of the strength of family and the power of possibility.