The New Holiday Film Review – Netflix’s Newest Holiday Romantic Comedy Falls Flat.

At the risk of come across as the Grinch, one must bemoan the premature arrival of Christmas movies prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. While temperatures drop, it feels premature to completely immerse in Netflix’s annual feast of cheap festive treats.

Similar to American chocolates which don’t include genuine cocoa, Netflix’s holiday movies are counted on for their style of mediocrity. They offer predictable elements – nostalgic casting, low budgets, fake snow, and absurd premises. In the worst cases, these films are unmemorable disasters; at best, they are forgettable fun.

Champagne Problems, the newest Christmas concoction, disappears into the vast middle of unremarkable territory. Helmed by Mark Steven Johnson, who previously last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like cheap bubbly – appropriately flat and context-dependent.

It begins with what appears to be a computer-made commercial for supermarket sparkling wine. This ad is actually the pitch of Sydney Price, played by the actress, to her colleagues at a financial firm. The protagonist is the stereotypical image of a career woman – overlooked, constantly on her device, and ambitious to the harm of her private world. When her boss dispatches her to France to close a deal over the holidays, her sibling makes her promise take one night in Paris to live for herself.

Naturally, the French capital is the ideal location to pull someone from Google Maps, despite the city is covered in below-grade CGI snow. In an overly quaint bookshop, the lead has a charming encounter with the male lead, and he pulls her away from her device. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she at first rejects this ideal guy for silly reasons.

Just as predictable are the movie mechanics that unfold at sudden shifts, reflecting the turning of aging champagne bottles in the cellars of Chateau Cassel. The catch? Henri is the successor to Chateau Cassel, reluctant to manage it and resentful toward his dad for selling it. Maybe the movie’s most salient contribution to romantic comedies, Henri is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The problem? The heroine truly thinks she’s not stripping this family-owned company for parts, vying against three stereotypical rivals: a severe French grand dame, a rigid German, and a delusional gay billionaire.

The twist? Sydney’s skeevy coworker the office rival appears without warning. The grist? Henri and Sydney gaze longingly at one another in festive sleepwear, across a huge divide in financial perspective.

The gift and the curse is that nothing here sticks beyond a bubbly buzz on an unfilled belly. There is no real absorbent filler – the lead actress, still best known for her part in the TV series, delivers a strictly serviceable performance, all sweet surfaces and gestures of care, almost motherly than romantic lead. The male star offers exactly the dollop of French charm with light inner conflict and little else. The tricks are unfunny, the romance is harmless, and the ending is straightforward.

For all its waxing poetic on the exclusivity of champagne, no one is pretending this is anything but a mass market item. The flaws are the very reasons some enjoy it. One might call a critic’s feelings about it a minor issue.

• Champagne Problems can be streamed on the platform.