Devouring The Latest Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.
‘Tis the time of year to lounge on the sofa and demolish a packet of holiday pastries in front of a terrific flick, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.
Once again, a selection of fresh holiday movies strives to join part of our holiday traditions—maybe even finding a spot alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).
Therefore, in a noble effort to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to embrace the festive feeling, I marathoned as many new festive movies as possible in a single day.
7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie
Kicking off, optimistically, on a good foot. This is the only 2025 movie on a popular review site's list of the best 100 festive features of all time.
The musical trio find themselves stuck in the UK after wrapping up their world tour and must make it back for Christmas. Their attempts are hampered by an villainous Saint Nick, who sings to announce they won’t get home until they “find their brotherly magic.”
The banter between the squabbling siblings is enjoyable even for the uninitiated, while devotees will undoubtedly notice lots of references as they endeavor to get back using every mode of travel possible.
It’s a travelogue of mishaps.
It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is superb for fans and a positive start to the day.
Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who will have to sit through it.
8.45am - Tinsel Town
Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland appears as a celebrity cast a traditional British stage show.
“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and ageing lead Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose manager has misled him into thinking he’s performing in high-class London stage.
His pantomime fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he protests. It's easy to predict their reply. Unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.
There are some very funny lines, some touching storylines, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.
It’s the type of film that would be a bit tacky at any other time of year, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.
Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄
Mid-Morning: Christmas Karma
An actor pops up at the start of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the second consecutive movie. Is this a budding festive ritual?
This time, he’s a musical taxi operator who encounters Mr Sood, the modern take on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Mr Sood is played by an actor from Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the director of Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative develops as the miserly Mr Sood is visited by the apparitions of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.
This cultural adaptation is at least different from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s acting is wooden—a significant issue when he’s so the focal point.
Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄
Noon: A BBC Special
There's just enough time for a network's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”
But after he gets an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) talks him into spending the sum on a family trip to Lapland.
There’s just one problem—he learns there was an mistake with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to figure out how to pay back the excess.
Enjoyable but forgettable.
Festive score: 🎄🎄
Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems
This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the background—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels comfortable and seasonal all the same.
Ambitious executive Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is sent to a country estate to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. On the way, she encounters a man in a literary haven who offers to show her the holidays in the City of Light.
An expert recently claimed this is the finest new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a exaggeration, but it is a Christmas romance with a touch of class and gives the necessary heartwarming sensation.
The scene with a detailed conversation about Die Hard is particularly strong too.
Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄
Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas
Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, in spite of the efforts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him the reality.
The secret is to be discovered, and Chris ventures forth to find it with the expert help of a group of well-known scientists and personalities.
It’s low-key but charming, and good viewing while anticipating Santa to visit.
Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄
4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.
Michelle Pfeiffer is the head of a quarrelling American family who gather for the holidays—including other Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.
Pfeiffer begins by referencing Christmas classics like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before stating: “They need to make a movie about the real champions of the holidays—moms.”
So that’s the premise, but in practice it’s really a combination of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character eventually takes center stage.
Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄
6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret
The day’s waned in quality, but happily here’s a new offering in the packed genre of formulaic, schmaltzy, badly acted—and utterly watchable—festive fodder.
It’s a tale as familiar as can be: An American woman goes on a quest to a picturesque cold country and ends up finding romance.
In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher
