Best. Christmas. Ever!

The 90s called, they want their actors back.

I’ve been getting a lot of requests to review Best. Christmas. Ever! — and by “a lot” I mean like one from a co-worker and two from Facebook friends. Unfortunately pesky things like work and my family have been getting in the way of my Christmas rom-com habit, but last night after the kids were tucked up all snug in their beds and my husband and I had polished off the eggnog, I settled in to watch this bad boy.

Let me tell you, twenty minutes in I was pissed. I was pissed at all of you for telling me to watch it. I was pissed at myself for selling out and taking requests like DJ Kyle on a Friday night at Shenanigans. And I was pissed at Netflix for spitting in the eye of all good upstanding Christmas-movie conventions and greenlighting a script with a hot take on a holiday tradition that hasn’t been wrung to death and then resurrected and dragged around Weekend-At-Bernies style.

The movie begins with Jackie (Brandy Norwood! Yes that Brandy from the 90s with the songs and the TV show) narrating her family’s holiday letter—a pitch-perfect satire of every holiday letter you’ve ever received, outlining the successful sale of her aviation business, their ten-year-old daughter’s acceptance to Harvard, and their son’s work bringing clean drinking water to third-world nations.

Cut to Charlotte (Heather Graham!) at her saggy Arizona condo, rolling her eyes at the letter before crumpling it up and throwing it off the balcony.

Naturally her son retrieves it and surreptitiously types the address into Charlotte’s GPS, accidentally navigating the family not to her sister’s house for Christmas, but (you guessed it!) to Jackie’s doorstep.

Stranded at Jackie’s mansion (which I’m pretty sure is the Yankee Candle Company flagship with like a tarp thrown over the food court), Charlotte sets out to prove that the newsletter is a pack of lies. And you know what ensues?

Of course you do. Hilarity. That’s what ensues.

The first half of this movie is just fun to watch. There’s custom pancakes, surreptitious sleuthing, overt allusions to sex (beds shake!), and Brandy swanning around in a series of increasingly ridiculous marabou-trimmed robes. Heather Graham and Brandy clearly have an offscreen bet going to see who can do the craziest crazy-eyes, and Brandy’s face has serious Uncanny Valley vibes even though it is her actual face and not CGI.

I think.

Oh and you know who else is in it? Jason Biggs! Yeah that dude who fucked a pie in the 90s, and who I can’t ever think about without also thinking of this Cosmpolitan essay about getting knocked up by some dude and then marrying him and then having a miscarriage, and then people in the comments section were all like dude that’s the guy who fucked a pie in the 90s!

So everything is all cute and froofy like an operetta but with more fake snow, and then I guess Fred Netflix got wind of it and went storming onto the set being all: “how dare you make a Christmas movie that doesn’t suck! Don’t you know there are people out there whose only joy in life is writing snarky reviews of sappy Christmas movies?! I need this movie to stop making sense right now, I need you to stop shooting witty dialogue and get me seven reels of Heather Graham and Brandy hugging and crying at a Christmas market, and I need an insipid subplot about kids believing in Santa. Oh, and I’m gonna need you to put in something really sad because someone told me that’s how character arcs work.”

And the director and cast and the marabou-robe-fluffer and the person in charge of putting the tarp over the food court at the Yankee Candle Factory were all like, “dude are you sure? We’re kinda having fun just dunking on holiday letters and hinting at a partner swap.”

And then Fred Netflix got all blustery and apoplectic and said, “listen, I am paying each of you seventy-five dollars and a glazed ham, and if you don’t want that ham you can walk off my set right now.”

So everyone stopped doing swinger jokes and crazy eyes and started doing a sob story in a hot-air balloon because, y’know…ham.

Best. Christmas. Ever! gets the not-so-best rating ever: two weird, fake, red Christmas Trees.