A Merry Little Ex-Mas and Champagne Problems: Are Netflix Films...Good Now?

0:04Ho, ho, ho, hello and welcome back to Bah Humbug, the Christmas movies podcast that always tries to do our enormous business deals right before the holidays. Hello, everybody. I'm Helen O 'Hara. Welcome back to another episode of Bah Humbug. I'm your host as ever. And I'm joined today by Olly Richards. How are you doing, Olly? I'm very well. Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas. Now it's Christmas. If we're here talking about ridiculous Netflix movies, for that is what we are doing today. We're going to be talking about not one, but two Netflix rom-coms of the season. God help us. We're going to be talking about Alicia Silverstone in A Merry Little Xmas, which is where she and Kate and Oliver Hudson as her husband Everett are divorcing.

0:50They are in the process, they're finalising the details of divorcing, but they're planning to spend one family Christmas together for their children's sake. But just as that's about to get underway, he introduces his new girlfriend played by Jamila Jamil. So we're going to be discussing that. We're also going to be discussing, however, Champagne Problems, which is a Mark Stephen Johnson film. Yes, the guy who did Ghost Rider and Daredevil and stars Minka Kelly as Sydney, who is a hotshot executive sent to Paris right before the holidays, of course, to try and buy the champagne business Chateau of Cassell.

1:25She made a dishy man in a bookshop. And wouldn't you know, he turns out to be the heir to the entire business. Who would have thought? Oh, my God. I, for one, am shocked. Ollie, you've watched both of these on purpose, I believe. Yes, very deliberately, yes. I watched them in the Cotswold. It feels very much the holiday of me. You basically are Kate Winslet. No, you're not. You're Cameron Diaz. I'll be any of them. I'll be any of them. Did you have a napkin on your head at the time? Yes, I did. Okay, well, that might have helped with some of it. So what did you think of, let's start with A Very Merry Xmas.

1:58One of those Netflix films that I feel was probably built around its title. Yes, very much so. I really enjoyed it. I've been on this podcast before. I think I've said to you, I have very low expectations. There's not a lot that it has to do. And this barter passed them to me. Like there was a lot that was genuinely funny. Good characters. There's only one significant issue I have with it that maybe we should come to later because it's right at the end. I'm kind of with you I think and I've said this before in the podcast I apologise for boring regular listeners of which I'm assured we have at least two I think it makes a difference when there are actual actors in Christmas movies and Alicia Silverstone is a charismatic proper actor Oliver Hudson I would say I would rank him a little bit lower on the scale but he is a proper actor he is he is good he is better than he has to be for these movies and I think that genuinely makes a difference and you have a good supporting cast here around them you have interesting people.

2:54Jamila Jamil could be funny in her sleep, probably. Pearson Foday, who plays this sort of younger love interest for Silverstone's character. Chet, yes. Many hats. Very funny. All of them good. Many, many hats. But I was taken aback by him, if I'm perfectly honest, because he stars in another Netflix film about a month or two ago called The Wrong Paris. I did not. I have not caught that one so far. Oh, you're missing out. Basically, it's somebody who wants to go to Paris and signs up for a reality show that is advertised as taking place in Paris because she wants to go to art school and hopes to get kicked off the reality show, the bachelorette style reality show early and then just go to art school.

3:35But it turns out, haha, it's the wrong Paris. And they are actually in Paris, Texas, romancing a rancher. And he refuses to get rid of her because he quite fancies her. So, yes, it's very silly and he's much he's playing it much straighter there and he's much less fun. So to see him in this being ridiculous was genuinely pleasant. Yes, he's super fun. And yeah, I thought Alyssa is still saying, I like that you get quite a lot of cherisms from her. You know, it feels like clueless flashbacks just in her expressions. When anyone slightly annoys her, there is that face that, you know, I think everyone knows what that face is.

4:12Yes. I mean, I don't know why she didn't have a bigger career after Clueless. I don't know if it was, you know, just the 90s being massively sexist or she didn't really want to go down that road. But this does remind you just how good she is in that film. Yeah, I agree with you. And that was really fun. What did you think of the kind of hijinks and stuff? Because, of course, this is just a series of excuses to get into ridiculous scrapes, really, isn't it? Yes. I thought the hijinks were solid rather than necessarily great. I'll tell you who I did enjoy is Nigel, the boyfriend. when he first showed up and he was a Harry Potter obsessive.

4:47I was like, this was a bit 15 minutes ago. But I thought the actor played it very charmingly. I thought he made good use of it. He did great prop work with his wand and his little portable fireplace. I thought that was strong. I thought he was good. A lot of the situations I thought were fairly obvious, like disagreements over getting a Christmas tree, a sledding trip going wrong. But they're all classics, I suppose, really. Yes, absolutely. there's a reason we go on sledding trips in Christmas movies somebody is going to fall off into the snow and probably have their love interest land on top of them that's how that seems to work exactly yes I also appreciate and this is again a bugbear of mine the decorations were appropriate the decorations looked like the kind of decorations you would get in these people's houses they were not bought for 50p on the last day of the sale in pound stretcher no disrespect you can do something with those but many of the you know of the overstretched I'm sure and underpaid production designers on some of these films have not had the resources or time to do so.

5:47These ones felt right for a eco-mad Alicia Silverstone and for her slightly more sort of, you know, mainstream husband. It kind of like that worked for me. I liked it. I liked how it looked. Yeah, I agree. Her house definitely, it had that lovely sort of charming ramshack. Here's a little bit odd. Here's very, very, very white clinical, looked like nothing had ever been touched house. That didn't quite make sense to me. Maybe it was because he was a doctor and he was like, we want to really hammer that home with a kind of surgery kind of feel. Possibly it was that. But yeah, I did like how, yes, it did feel like they lived there, which you don't always get.

6:22I assume maybe his house was the kind of like turnkey home where you move in and it's already been pre-furnished by like a real estate person, I guess, in the States. They must be doing okay financially if he was able to, you know, go through a divorce and immediately get that place. Well, they're not spending any money, are they? She's making everything and all their clothes are old rags, as we understand from the kids. So, yeah, clearly they're just putting it all aside. She's not paying power bills. That's also true. All being driven by the solar panels on a roof. I mean, that was an extraordinary example of foreshadowing when they have a big discussion early on about how the solar panels could power a celebration for the entire town or words pretty much to that effect.

7:04it will not surprise you to know there is a big snowstorm towards the end and the entire town has to come to their house who would have thought yes i feel like that's what melissa jones hart was there like to highlight things that we might need to remember later i was expecting her to be in it more when uh when i saw the early images i thought oh it's going to be a you know they're going to be co-leads but she was just popped up every now and again very welcome but it was almost as if she was passing and they said well we'll give you a few lines you can be in there oh oh melissa you're in town.

7:34Why not come along down to the set? Probably filming another Christmas film just down the road. The next studio over. Maybe that is how this works. Maybe that is why the same people turn up in Christmas movies year after year. They're all just there in probably Vancouver and just get roped in to help out, I guess. Yeah, I guess so. What did you think of the town stuff to this one? Because it's meant to be, it is really going for that Hallmark angle. It isn't quite called Christmas Falls, but it's pretty close. Yes, I would have liked more of it. Again, I understand there's budget restrictions.

8:09It was very charming what we saw. I would have loved a bit more. I didn't get the full sense of the whole community. You know when they went round and they knocked on other people's doors? It was a little bit like we've got one house and we're just going to shoot you from slightly different angles so that you'll think there's more to it. I would love more, but I do get those budget restrictions. I liked the hardware store that the dad's own. Yeah. Thought they were a lot of fun. They were a lot of fun. Again, they should have been in it more. I wanted more for them to do. I wanted some conspiracy, a bit more conspiracy or something that they could have gotten their teeth into a bit more.

8:46That would have been fun. I think the whole thing maybe needed a little bit more conflict. You've got the conflict there, which is that Everett has got a new partner and Kate is pretending she's got a new partner. I guess that's supposed to be the conflict, that, oh, this is keeping these two apart. but I thought it needed maybe a bigger stumble there but that's because the one, I say I enjoyed this film very much but the one thing I think it did wrong so I thought the correct ending was that Kate and Everett decide that they're not meant to be together and that's fine because the ending that they did go to, spoiler alert which is that they realised that they should never consciously uncouple, as they say in their Chris Martin Gwyneth Paltrow way they never should have done that originally I think that feels a bit old-fashioned and the more modern version should have been you know what, a relationship doesn't have to be romantic forever we can be separated, we can still be a happy family that's what I was hoping for I still liked, I was not angry with what they did and I did like that they had Tess and Chet get together off camera I would have liked a bit more of that actually a bit of more flirtation between them would have been fun I honestly thought it was going to be Chet and Melissa Joan Hart even better even better keep him keep him alive because he was fun he was like the most untoxic man going i i kind of agree with you i think this gets into maybe the and just to get a bit more highfalutin for a second but like i do think this gets into the kind of small c conservative and sometimes big c conservative nature of these films yes which is very you know status quo quote anti you know obviously heteronormative in in many cases not all these days which is good but but very much like if there's a guy who you have been married to you will probably end up married to him at the end of the film that is probably the way that that almost all of these films go and you're right that a little bit more surprise there would have been would have been quite welcome i kind of agree with you on that one i felt like it was a bit of a of a swerve and like i say chet needed to stay in somebody's life but i was up for him and melissa jone hart because she was like you know ogling him throughout in a very fun way he was making her feelings clear at all points he could have moved in at any point that poor objectified man i am shocked he seemed okay with it i mean if you're gonna if you're gonna strip down to your your festive pants then you probably don't mind you probably don't mind people look you look he felt like he consented that's probably which is vital and i am interested in the levels of objectification of men in these films now there is a clear target audience and it's clearly man fanciers because you know you think about this you think about god help us hot frosty last year where you had a snowman turned into a an adonis frankly who was more six-pack than man then you had the and i have forgotten the name i think it was the christmas gentleman which was magic might oh yes christmas yeah with chad michael murray and co it feels like we're getting an improbable number of abs in our christmas movies these days.

11:50I'm not criticising, I'm just noting the trend. Well, there's an audience for it, Helen. We say as two members of the audience, people want it. And I think it's all good fun, nothing wrong with it. As long as everyone's keeping warm, that's what matters. I'm not sure some of them were, they looked absolutely freezing at times. But yeah, it's interesting. I guess maybe it's Hollywood's recognition that a man-fancying audience does exist because you know the problem has never been bikinis or equivalent on screen the problem has been if only one group of people were being objectified I feel like if everybody's being roughly equally objectified and yes done with a good sense of fun and a sense of non-threat then maybe that's not so bad exactly it's how the objectification is done if everyone feels comfortable in what's happening which I do not think is always the case in some of the older films where they've made younger women the object of the education uh does not feel the balance of power feels off there where i think when you've got you've got men men stripping off there's just automatically a different balance of power absolutely when we're talking we're going to talk about balances of power when we talk about pillion later in the season but let's talk now yes speaking of younger women let's talk now about champagne problems so this again i cannot stress enough written and directed by mark stephen johnson who is a very nice man hollywood director i used to you know meet him through empire work and he made the original ghost rider movie with nicholas cage he made the original daredevil movie with ben affleck i mean the original but you know what i mean the one before all of the the recent daredevil stuff you know he was making kind of big action movies and i think his career went a little bit askew he didn't make movies for a few years and he's come back and kind of reinvented himself doing pretty good generally speaking you know silly christmas movies and i mean fair play to him he's still working he's still getting to write as well as direct you know he did things most recently like he did love in the villa which was a okay not a christmas one but another netflix kind of rom-com he did love guaranteed which was the one about a dating app and they're a bit better than they need to be basically which is always a pleasure with these.

14:06Was this better than it needed to be for you? Oh my God, so much better. I had zero expectations. I would have never connected the dots that was that Mark Stephen Johnson, unless you had told me. I just switched it on when I was away on my little holiday. And just because it was the first thing that came up on Netflix is that this is going to be dreadful, but we want to watch something that we don't pay any attention to. I really enjoyed it. I think it's properly plotted. I think I really like Sydney as a heroine because she doesn't I think you often get with a lot of these Christmas films that a lot of if they have got a female age they often make her quite manic but you don't get that with this at all she's she's very calm all the way through she's I think she's funny I think she plays the comedy well yeah I love the setting I like that they actually went to Paris by all by all appearances unless their CG was very good because I was expecting Toronto.

15:01Yes, that is the usual way. Yeah, but it was definitely very much looked like Paris. I thought it was I thought it was funny. I thought it came to an ending that wasn't exactly what I was expecting. They twisted it a little bit. I really, really enjoyed it. What did you think? I'm similar. I had extraordinarily low expectations. Again, it felt like it was another film built around a title. I didn't rush to watch it initially because I didn't realise it was a Christmas movie. So I thought, oh, well, I can get to that in a new year. But no, I mean, look, it does play with a lot of these improbable, you know, fake deadlines and sort of unconvincing business propositions that you get in a lot of these films.

15:40But it didn't go the full way with it. I thought, for example, there's a kind of bad guy played by Javier Jens, who I thought was also going to be her fiance at one point, because that's the way it often is in these films. And thankfully, he wasn't, for example. So genuine credit for that. They didn't play with the, oh, you have a fiancé back home angle when she met the hunky Frenchman. I really, really wanted to go to the bookstore in Paris, which looked amazing. Although the idea that there would be multiple sections to the English section in a Paris bookstore, I can tell you is ambitious. But that looked amazing.

16:13Yes, I loved that. Was, did genuinely, I mean, I was pretty sure it wasn't real, but I did check. Me too, yes. We're those people. Yeah, we're like, ooh. Because otherwise I'll get some of the Eurostar. I guess if you want a magical bookstore in Paris, I think Shakespeare and Company is still the place to go. But this did really look worth a go. So well done. Again, well done on the production design. And they shot in actual chateaus, in actual, you know, I'm guessing working vineyards and so on. Now, again, do I think it's realistic that even someone who was kind of playful and enjoying people competing to buy his champagne terroir or whatever they call them, would force executives to go out and actually prune the vines.

16:56No, I don't think he would, because I don't think he'd trust them near his vines. But, you know, this is the kind of silliness we sign up for in these films, I suppose. Exactly. Is it realistic? No. Do I want it to be realistic? Absolutely not. No, I really enjoyed it. Tell me if you think they do some of these things deliberately, because I often wonder in these Christmas films if they give you some things to make fun of, because that's part of the deal. But, you know, when she first meets Henri in the bookshop, and she gives him her list of where she wants to go. She wants to go to the Eiffel Tower.

17:27She wants to go to a restaurant, a cafe floor. And he says, no, you don't want to go there. I will show you there's better places you can go in Paris to eat. And he takes her to the most generic Christmas market you've ever seen at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and gives her the Paris specialities of macaron, vacheaux, hot wine, as they call it, and crepes. I mean come on I could find you more real Paris than that Yes I 100 % tripped over that and so did everyone I've talked to about this film actually I mean and even like if he's buying her macarons and if he's like if he is who he says he is if he is genuinely the heir to a champagne estate right those would be like Pierre Hermès macarons or La Dure or somewhere they wouldn't just be generic he wouldn't be buying street macarons are you kidding me?

18:18Come on He would have standards. He would have a place that specifically that he goes to for macarons. I also had a problem. So she's staying at the Hotel Regina, which is near the Louvre. There's no way you can see the Eiffel Tower that clearly through that window. Come on. You hate when they get the geography wrong, don't you? Especially in Paris. Always bothers me in Paris. So she's running the short distance from her hotel to her meeting. And then she runs the wrong way on the south bank, which would be nowhere near her hotel or her meeting. that would be in completely the wrong direction.

18:50Come on, people. Come on. We all have Google Maps nowadays. It just doesn't work. But do you think they may be doing it? I like to think that they may, like Mark Stephen Johnson's, I'm going to put in these things that are wrong and silly because people want that. These things are sent to try us. That's basically what you're saying. I want to be tried to this gentle, unchallenging level, really. That works for me. I would like to think so. What I actually think happens is that someone from Netflix or similar or a producer, I'm not going to blame this specific company. Maybe this was picked up later.

19:24But someone at some point has said with the money has said this needs to be very clear to people, you know, who don't know anything about France, who have never been to France, who have no interest really in going to France, who eat freedom fries at home and not French fries. and I suspect, look, I would love to be wrong and I would love your answer to be right, but I suspect it is a sort of lowest common denominator thing. Because, I mean, yes, both of us, having been to Paris a bit, could do better than this tour of Paris. Like, there are so many better places to go. I mean, even for a view of the Eiffel Tower, there are better places to go.

20:02Are you kidding me? Don't stand directly underneath it if you want the best to use. Yeah, seriously. But I did enjoy it. Another thing that I really enjoyed, So when they get to the chateau and they are joined by the rivals for possibly acquiring the champagne house, who are Roberto, who is just a rich billionaire who likes throwing parties and drinking champagne. Otto, who's a German who's the most stereotypical German you've ever seen. And Brigitte, who's possibly the most stereotypical Parisian older lady you've ever seen. He just means to everyone. Otto talks about many things about German Christmas.

20:38and I looked them up and everything's true. I learned all sorts of things. I learned of Frau Pershta, or I can't remember exactly how it's pronounced, but Krampus' wife, who does indeed punish naughty children. And at one point he says that he lost his sense of smell playing, apologies any German listeners for my pronunciation, Ice-Dog-Schießen, which is a real sport, which seems to be sort of an equivalent of 10-pin bowling on ice, is the best I could. Wow. So it's an educational film, Helen. It's not just festive. You're learning things. I'll be honest. I did think about looking that up and then I thought, no, Helen, you've already been fooled by the bookshop.

21:18Don't look that up. That's bound to be fake. I'm so impressed. It is a thing. Wow. Everyone's going to be playing it this year. That's terrifying. I loved him. I loved all of them, actually. I thought they added so much to it. again having genuine kind of silly characters rather than just you know the mayor of the small town I think really added something they all had a reason to be there they all had a reason to be a bit weird I think the right person ended up with the vineyard if we're perfectly honest I think that was 100 % correct and yeah I just quite enjoyed their dynamic I also enjoyed the scenes between father and son between owner of vineyard and reluctant heir to same so I should probably give them their names, but you had Tom Wozniak as Henri, who's the love interest, and then Thibaut de Montalembert as Hugo, his dad.

22:12Man from Call My Agent. Man from Call My Agent, correct, yes. Proper actors as well, proper actual stars, which always helps. Yeah, I really enjoyed the whole thing. I thought the whole dynamic between Henri and Sydney was good. I thought Minkie Kelly did a good job. I liked that they gave the leading lady a fart joke and nobody else. I think that's not something you see very often. Very unusual. Very unusual. And well played as well, I thought. And I also liked that she was embarrassed and he was just very French about it. Yeah, I thought the whole thing was very good. I thought it was, again, spoilers, I did think it was possibly fiscally unwise that when they opened their bookshop they did so in the grounds of the chateau, of the champagne house.

22:59I don't know how much passing trade they're going to get there, but it looked very nice. Yeah, I think of all, any Christmas films that I have seen in the past few years, this is probably the best new one I've seen. Okay, all right. I really liked it. I do think it scores very highly in terms of the Netflix rom-com-y Christmas movies. I absolutely agree. But yeah, no, I had a lot of quibbles. especially in the Paris scenes. But it is well written, I have to say. I mean, there's a reason he was getting big blockbusters for a while. You know, he worked on Christopher Robin, I think, as well. You know, he's a proper writer.

23:38He's a proper director. And I think that kind of thing shows in these films more than it sometimes should. All right, let's assess both. So let's go back to Merry Xmas. Merry Little Xmas, I apologise. Use his correct title, please. So first of all, the Christmassy-ness of this film, how would it score for you? let's say out of five for Christmas-iness. I'm going to give it, I was going to say four, I'm going to give it five. It couldn't be much more Christmassy. It felt I got at every second of that movie, I knew it was perfect. If there were not twinkling lights, there was a jumper or there was something going on or there was a gay dad dressed as a gingerbread man.

24:14There was something letting me know that it was the festive season. And I applaud that. Absolutely agree. I think that's a five out of Christmas-iness. And then quality of actual film. Again, we are always judging on a curve for Christmas movies. You know, a five-star Christmas movie is not necessarily the same thing as a five-star regular movie, but how would you rank it out of five as a movie? I'm trying to think of where I'm starting this curve. If I'm grading it on a curve of Netflix Christmas movies, well, I'll broaden it more streamer Christmas movies, I'm going to give it a four because I thought it was very enjoyable.

24:53on a broader sense of Christmas so I think it's a solid three really but compared to what you expect from a stream of Christmas movie I thought it was very good Absolutely, okay so now Champagne Problems how would that score for you on Christmasiness? Oh it actually probably gets a slightly lower score on Christmas because I don't think Christmas is not so fundamental to it is it? So Christmas, can I give half points? You can, why not? It's Christmas, you know, let's be easy on ourselves. I would say I'm going to give it three and a half on Christmas, you know. Because there was pretty much snow most of the time, wasn't there?

25:31Once they got to Champagne, yeah. I don't remember a lot in Paris. I think also, she lived in New York, didn't she, at the beginning? Oh, yeah. It was the unnamed city. It was snowing out the window when she was with her sister. Boom. Okay, that's bonus snow points then. All right. okay in that case I mean I was going to go three but you've convinced me it's three and a half for for Christmasiness and then as a film again you can do the same yeah I'm doing Netflix versus I'm doing that I'm doing the grade I on that well on the Netflix version it's probably a 4.5 on the more general curve a four on the non-Christmas just as a movie separated Christmas is probably a three.

26:15But so my very confusing scoring system there, I think let's round it off to a four just to make everything easy. Fair enough. I think your first scoring system was pretty spot on, actually. I'd agree with that. I think, yeah, if I was judging it for like a mainstream audience who are not watching Christmas movies on purpose, I think it would be a three and that would be fine. For an audience versed in these streamer Christmas movies, a 4.5 is probably about right, actually. So yeah, this is way up at the top of those ones. All right. Well, thank you so much, Ollie, for joining us and for taking two bullets for us this year.

26:50I'm assuming that your favourite Christmas movie of all time remains unchanged. It has not changed. I was trying to think, because I knew you would ask me, I was thinking, what can I... Because my favourite remains a Muppet Christmas Carol. Correct, yeah. Other ones that I do love, I'm sure other people have chosen this, but Klaus has become such a favourite. That's become the first Christmas movie I watched. That's my kind of first of December Christmas movie. Interesting. Okay. It is fascinating, isn't it? Because it builds up, I guess. It builds the Christmassy-ness very slowly through that film.

27:19Exactly. Exactly. And we don't have time to discuss it now, but there's a very set order, or at least a set schedule of when you should be watching them. But one that came to mind, because it's sort of mentioned in Champagne Problems, is Krampus. Have you seen Krampus? I have, yes. I really enjoyed that. It's kind of basically a Christmas horror film. So Krampus being essentially the evil Santa. And it's the family being terrified by Krampus. And it's not as good as this, but it's got a little bit of gremlins about it. It's got that kind of tone. I really enjoyed it. I think that's, if you haven't watched it, I think that is one to check.

27:58That is a good call. The Christmas horror, there aren't very many that I could find this year. I wasn't really coming across any. There's Silent Night, Deadly Nights coming out in cinemas, I guess. But apart from that, there hasn't been a lot of Christmas horror. which is a shame because recent years we've had things like I think it's There's Something in the Barn I talked to the director of that, that's a really charming Christmas movie about evil elves or gnomes, it's hard for me to know the difference but yeah they can be very Christmassy weirdly the horrors, it can really work Alright well that is it then for this episode of Bah Hamburg, do join us for more Christmas film chat on the next episode and Ollie thank you so much for being here where can people find more of your work should they wish to do so?

28:37Well, if people are still looking for Christmas presents for anyone who likes the director Tim Burton, I do have a book out now, which is Tim Burton, The Complete Unofficial Guide, which is part of the Iconic Directors series. So that is available in all good book retailers. And elsewhere, you can find me on Blue Sky, just Olly Richards, O-L-L-Y. And the same on Instagram, but I don't really post there. And when they do, it's like nice trees I've seen on pictures of my dog. So if that's the thing, then you can find me there. It's a very good dog, though. He's a very good dog. The book is fantastic.

29:08I've already got it and have read it. You are so kind. Excellent. So everyone do go out and buy that. But otherwise, Ollie, thank you so much. And Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. Thank you very much.

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