How Christmas films became so bad
There is a mania for festive movies, but none match the likes of ‘Love Actually’, says John Sturgis
TVery few people will want to see this year’s offerings such as ‘Single All the Way’
hey were, for decades, an integral part of the Christmas season, a way of bringing families together and reminding us what we were celebrating. Whether it was Hollywood or Pinewood, the film industry once supplied a steady stream of festive greats: not just It’s a Wonderful Life but Meet Me in St Louis, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Miracle on 34th Street, The Bishop’s Wife, The Holly and the Ivy or the multiple iterations of Scrooge.
As recently as the early 2000s, they were still making Christmas films with ambition and budget. Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas was the sixth-biggest film of 2000, taking $345million worldwide. It was followed by Love Actually, The Holiday, The Polar Express, Arthur Christmas, Bad Santa and Elf. Then there was Nativity!
– popular enough to sustain not one but three sequels.
All of these were released between 2003 and 2011. They may not have been universally appreciated – Love Actually has an army of haters at least as numerous as its fans – but they had star casts, serious marketing campaigns and, in the case of Love Actually and The Holiday, glamorous settings on both sides of the Atlantic.
And while they may have offered ripe Stilton levels of cheese, they have endured and are still watched annually by millions.
But this period now seems like a golden age. Because, in the 10 years since the last of those – Arthur Christmas – the Christmas classic has been replaced by... the Christmas turkey.
Take Netflix’s most promoted new offering this year – A Castle for Christmas, in which Brooke Shields plays a bestselling writer who leaves New York to spend December in a fantasy evocation of Scotland where she falls, first, for the local castle and, ultimately, its laird, Cary Elwes. It’s said to be a reworking of the 1945 classic I Know Where I’m Going! – but Powell and Pressburger it very much isn’t. Describing the film as the kind of production that makes him “weep for all the excellent projects that never get financing”, one critic called it “a sleigh-crash of bad acting, idiotic plotting and terrible dialogue”.
Netflix also gives us A Boy Called Christmas, with Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Toby Jones and Sally Hawkins – but you couldn’t make it past the headline of The Daily Telegraph’s review without wincing: “Where there should be magic and charm, there’s nothing but gloop.”
Sky offers Last Train to Christmas, in which Michael Sheen meets the ghosts of Christmas past and Christmas alternative future – but on a train.
And after these, there is a long trail of “new for 2021” television movies on various platforms that very few people will want to see ( Under the Christmas Tree, Dancing through the Snow, Single All the Way), sequels to films you probably never saw in the first place ( The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star), and festive star vehicles ( Waffles + Mochi’s Holiday Feast, featuring Michelle Obama).
In fact, more Christmas films have been released this year than ever before – more than 200 – double the number just five years ago. But quantity and quality have diverged.
Jane Crowther, the editor of Total Film, says the decline coincides with the rise of the streaming giants.
“[Older film] studios are still making big-budget movies for release in late November or early December to draw a family audience to go to the cinema over the holiday period, but recently those films are more likely to be something like The Matrix or West Side Story, which will retain interest into January and February,” she says. “But there is still a huge demand for wall-to-wall Christmas content, so the streaming services step in.”
The function of a film designed to be watched in the home is very different from a big-screen event, she says.
“We just kind of put on one of these films as almost ambient background festiveness – you’ve put up the tree, you’ve decorated and you want something Christmassy on the TV. These films become like the endless Christmas soundtrack in shops. And as people get into the Christmas spirit, they seem to become less critical.”
PR and branding expert Mark Borkowski agrees that the streaming revolution hasn’t been kind to a genre that was already prone to erratic quality control. “Netflix, Apple and Amazon are generally looking for products that will engage beyond just the holiday period,” he says. “So they’ll make a raft of Christmas films, but without great ambition or budget. [Meanwhile] the TV companies feel safer doing Christmas specials of existing popular shows – one thinks of Gavin and Stacey two years ago – than they are commissioning new content. So the Christmas movie is at an historically low ebb.”
This, perhaps, explains Disney’s decision to return for a sixth outing of Home Alone. But reviews have dismissed Home Sweet Home Alone as more sickly than sweet.
Some viewers apparently don’t care. There is a hard core of fans who will happily watch Christmas movies – whatever the quality – all day, which explains the existence of channels solely devoted to screening these films. This began in the US, where the Hallmark Channel screens wall-towall Christmas content from late October – but now exists in the UK with Pluto TV Christmas and others.
Channel 5 goes much the same way in December, showing four or more of these films a day. Offerings include A Christmas Movie Christmas, in which “a festive film fanatic wakes up in a Christmas movie”.
One person who hopes the genre can recover some kudos is the actor Dan Fredenburgh. He had a small but memorable part in Love Actually as Colin Firth’s character’s brother. He was also in the BBC’s 2019 gothic A Christmas Carol – and pops up in another Sky festive offering this year, A Christmas Number One.
“There is an irony in me being repeatedly cast in Christmas films as I was a confirmed Grinch. But with Love Actually, in particular, you come to realise that you are part of what has become an institution,” he says. “I still get people coming up to me in the street nearly 20 years on because of it. There is something about these films when they strike the right note that forces you to put your cynicism to one side.”