You know the film. It’s a film you have never heard of. The cast might be composed of actors you know and love or complete unknowns. You stumble across it on streaming and wonder if it will be worth two hours of your time. This series will be devoted to reviewing films like these, the strange items that pop up when you are looking for a flick on the streaming service of your choice. This is “We Found It On Streaming”
FILM: Holidate
Release Date: October 28, 2020
Run Time: 104 Minutes.
Streaming Service(s): Netflix
Rating: TV-MA
For Sloane (Emma Roberts), going home for Christmas is an exercise in torture. It’s hours of her family, especially her mother Elaine (Frances Fisher), asking her why she is still single and/or trying to set her up with every eligible bachelor. Jackson (Luke Bracey) isn’t having a much better Christmas. The girl he had been dating for three dates has brought him home to meet her parents, and that act caused her to go from a casual relationship to a stage 5 clinger. He leaves, vowing to swear off these kinds of relationships ever again.
A chance meeting at the local mall between the pair offers a solution to both of their problems. Inspired by Sloane’s Aunt Susan (Kristin Chenowith) and her policy of limited time “holidates,” Sloane and Jackson enter into an agreement to be each other’s platonic plus-one for any holiday function that might arise. The plan works great until the start to develop feelings for each other.
If you’ve seen any romantic comedy, then in a lot of ways you’ve seen Holidate. Even though it has a scene where it makes fun of the tropes of the genre, the tropes are right there in the film. You know. We all know the couple is falling in love before they do, the misunderstanding that would have been cleared up in the second act if the characters were actually able to talk honestly with each other, stuff like that.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. The reason why formulas are called formulas is because the formulas work. And they work here, especially with a cast as good as this one. However, the filmmakers try bringing something new to the format–a heaping dose of crudeness and vulgarity. Yes, if you are a person who think they might like romantic comedies better if they only featured one of the main characters suffering from explosive diarrhea, then this film is for you.
There are some laughs generated by the crude content, but the way it is presented just doesn’t work in the context of the film. The vulgar content seems tacked on and out of place. For example, there’s a scene when Slone is trying to get her prudish soon-to-be sister-in-law Liz (Cynthy Wu) to say the F-word. It’s a funny scene, but it would have been a whole lot funnier if the goody-too-shoes aspect of Liz’s character was introduced sooner. Or at all. Up to then, Liz was basically a cypher with little in the way of character development. Crude humor works best when there is a solid, well-defined characterization behind it. Just having a six-year-old drop the f-bomb because the film is about to get really sappy isn’t that funny on its own.
I did mention the cast before, and pretty much everyone does a good job. Both Sloane and Jackson are a bit off-putting at the start of the film, you can tell why they are still single, but Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey are charming enough that we stick are willing around until we get to the part of the film where we find out why their characters are the way they are. There is quite a bit of chemistry between them as well, which is important because, well, it is a romantic comedy.
Chenoweth is great, as usual, as the wild Aunt Sarah. As is Frances Fisher as Elaine. I just wish she had more to do. She is one of the most underrated actresses working today, but for most of the movie all she has to do is alternate between harping on Slone to find a man or harping on Slone as to what she is wearing. She does both aspects well, but she could do a whole lot more.
The directing by John Whitesell works best when he just decides to tell the story and not get fancy with the directorial tricks. Yes, presenting a FaceTime call on screen so we see both sides of it at the same does work out well, but spinning around Sloane, her sister and Liz as the talk over choosing wedding invitations is nausea inducing. Yes, just having characters sitting down and talking might be considered boring, but it seldom makes me want to vomit.
But, overall, there are not enough bad elements to make me pan the film, nor are there enough good elements to make me recommend the film. For lack of a better word, the film is just there. It is not appointment viewing, but it is not the worst film to have on in the background this New Year’s Eve as you wait for the ball to drop.
Have you found a film on streaming that you’d like us to look at? Leave it in the comments and it might appear in a future installment of this feature.
