STREAMING REVIEW:
Netflix;
Comedy;
Not rated;
Stars Alicia Silverstone, Oliver Hudson, Jameela Jamil, Melissa Joan Hart, Pierson Fode.
A good Christmas movie, whether it be the pure, childlike joy of Elf or the frantic, heartfelt family chaos of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, should feel like a warm, spontaneous embrace. A Merry Little Ex-Mas, however, is not a charmingly bad holiday film but “a field guide for content created by committee,” where every element, from the script to the set design, fumbles like a cynical function rather than genuine entertainment.
It is worth noting that, amid the film’s structural shortcomings, the producing team did manage one clever beat: the title itself. While still cliché, A Merry Little Ex-Mas is a neat, instantly recognizable twist on the standard holiday phrase, perfectly packaging the film’s core theme of post-divorce conflict with a touch of seasonal wit.
However, the film quickly succumbs to a level of calculated contrivance that is arguably worse than its annual peers. While a standard saccharine Hallmark Christmas film commits to its earnest, simple fantasy, A Merry Little Ex-Mas attempts to be a savvy critique of the rom-com genre, only to fall flat on both counts. It introduces a modern dynamic — the pain of a midlife divorce — but then immediately degrades its own premise, leaning on painfully dated jokes, such as the repeated, unfunny reference to the separation as a “conscious uncoupling.” The film is so laden with predictable elements that, were there more clichés, this could easily be a textbook on cinematic clichés.
The entire production lacks authenticity, justifying the feeling that the production design itself is contrived. Much of the running time is spent around meticulously set dinner tables or in scenes of picturesque activities in the snow. These moments exist purely to maximize the film’s holiday aesthetic. Even the attempts at low-stakes humor fall flat, such as a bizarre sequence involving a drone being run over, which fails utterly as a relatable laugh for anyone. The charming, absurdly named small town of “Winterlight” feels less like a real place and more like an elaborate, synthetic movie set, reinforcing the impression that we are watching a film built solely to fill a slot on a holiday streaming slate.
Alicia Silverstone’s performance as Kate deserves a better vehicle. Kate’s story, sacrificing a career as an architect in Boston to become a “trad wife” in a small town for her workaholic doctor-husband, is the core of the film’s sentiment. This potentially interesting conflict, however, is undermined by reducing her character to a checklist of modern trends: She is into everything cliché about living healthily and being environmentally PC. The script and casting commit a cynical disservice by structuring the romance around her performing a “cutesy” repertoire of mannerisms. This dynamic, exacerbated by a jarringly younger love interest, feels utterly unearned and highlights the industry’s ongoing struggle to write authentic romantic tension for middle-aged women. Watching a star of Silverstone’s nostalgic status lend her talent to such aggressively disposable content borders on embarrassment, suggesting her handlers should have known better.
The ensemble cast only compounds the problem. The children exist to necessitate the family reunion, and the daughter’s complexity is reduced to her attending Oxford and having a “Harry Potter”-obsessed British boyfriend. Even more egregious are the ex-husband’s parents, the gay fathers, who are so contrived that they are challenging to watch, with one being Black solely to tick a diversity box. The appearance of Melissa Joan Hart as Kate’s best friend, April, adds further weight to this cynicism; given her role as a producer, her limited, undeveloped screen time feels like a blatant casting checkbox for a recognizable name rather than a necessary narrative addition. The core dramatic conflict with the ex-husband, Everett, and his younger, successful, model-like, multicultural girlfriend is agonizingly predictable, resolved with the emotional depth of a flowchart.
The entire endeavor attempts to satisfy everyone — the ’90s nostalgia crowd, the comfort viewers, and those seeking a slightly subversive relationship story — by ticking every item on a market research checklist. It is “a calculated piece of content” that never risks genuine emotion or a real laugh. Though Netflix does not release its numbers, my professional estimate is that the final working budget falls between $5 million and $7 million USD before Canadian tax credits. One can only wish that Netflix had discounted monthly subscriptions by lottery, or sent random subscribers some holiday funny money, rather than greenlighting this utterly humorless, instantly forgettable Christmas movie.
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