Champagne Problems Critique – The Streaming Giant’s Newest Christmas Romcom Lacks Fizz.
At the risk of come across as a holiday cynic, one must bemoan the early release of holiday films before Thanksgiving. While temperatures drop, it seems premature to completely immerse in the platform’s annual buffet of cheap holiday entertainment.
Like US candy that no longer contain real chocolate, the service’s holiday films are counted on for their style of badness. They provide rote familiarity – familiar actors, low budgets, fake snow, and absurd premises. At worst, these films are unmemorable disasters; at best, they are lighthearted distractions.
Champagne Problems, the latest holiday offering, blends into the vast middle of unremarkable territory. Directed by the filmmaker, whose previous romantic comedy was so disposable, this film goes down like cheap bubbly – fittingly lackluster and context-dependent.
The story starts with what appears to be a computer-made commercial for drug store brand champagne. This ad is actually the pitch of the main character, played by the actress, to her colleagues at the Roth Group. The protagonist is the construction paper cut-out of a career woman – overlooked, constantly on her device, and driven to the harm of her personal life. When her boss sends her to France to close a deal over Christmas, her sibling makes her promise spend an evening in Paris to enjoy life.
Of course, Paris is the perfect place to wrest one away from Google Maps, even when the city is draped with below-grade CGI snow. At a overly quaint bookshop, Sydney has a charming encounter with Henri Cassell, and he distracts her from her device. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she at first rejects this perfect man for frivolous excuses.
Equally as expected are the film elements that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, reflecting the rotation of aging champagne bottles in the cellars of Chateau Cassel. The catch? Henri is the successor to Chateau Cassel, reluctant to run it and resentful toward his father for putting it up for sale. In perhaps the movie’s most salient contribution to the genre, Henri is highly critical of corporate buyouts. The conflict? The heroine sincerely believes she’s not stripping this family-owned company for parts, competing against three stereotypical rivals: a severe French grand dame, a severe blonde German man, and a delusional gay billionaire.
The development? Her shady colleague the office rival shows up without warning. The grist? The two leads look yearningly at one another in festive sleepwear, despite a vast chasm in financial perspective.
The gift and the curse is that none of this sticks longer than a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of substantial content – Minka Kelly, most famous for her part in Friday Night Lights, gives a strictly serviceable performance, superficially pleasant and gestures of care, almost motherly than romantic lead. The male star offers just the right amount of Gallic appeal with light inner conflict and little else. The tricks are not amusing, the romance is harmless, and the ending is predictable.
Despite its waxing poetic on the exclusivity of champagne, nobody claims this is anything other than a mainstream product. The things to hate are also the things to like. One might call an expert’s opinion about it a champagne problem.
- The Holiday Film is now available on Netflix.
