I believe I have seen the worst Christmas film of all time: Six Christmas films rated

This year I have decided to fully, unapologetically embrace the fact that I love a Christmas film. I’m done pretending I’m above it. Hand me one (1) man in a green jumper, one (1) woman in a red coat, a quaint small town where no one has a real job, a sprinkling of suspiciously uniform snow, and a plot which is neatly wrapped up with a bow in under ninety minutes, and I’m happy.

Netflix now has an entire category dedicated solely to Christmas films – a cinematic advent calendar of festive nonsense – and over the weekend we worked through a frankly alarming number of them. I have watched them, I have absorbed them, and I have rated them not as normal films, because that would be cruel, but as Christmas films, which are graded on their own special little scale.

They get seasonal dispensation: worse acting? Fine. Terrible CGI snow? Expected. Plot holes you could drive Santa’s sleigh through? Festive!

You can see ALL of my Christmas film reviews here!

Anyway, in no particular order except the worst one is left for last, here’s what we watched, and how they scored.

Click and Collect

An absolute masterclass in British Christmas chaos starring Stephen Merchant and Asim Chaudhry (AKA Chabuddy G), who go on a nine hour round trip to fix the main character’s epic fuck up of not getting his daughter the Christmas present she wants. Crucially, it’s under an hour long. UNDER AN HOUR. Do you know how perfect that is for December, when everyone is exhausted, mildly hungover, and surviving on the nutritional value of advent calendar chocolate?

It’s funny, it’s frantic, it feels painfully relatable, and at no point does it demand more brain power than you have left at this stage of the year. Honestly, it might be the perfect Christmas watch.

Rating: 10/10. A must-watch. Even my dad could make it through this without falling asleep.

A Merry Little Ex-Mas

This festive masterpiece stars Cher from Clueless, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, AND Jameela Jamil. Proper Milfathon. There’s also a very attractive man who gets naked for absolutely no narrative reason other than ‘Merry Christmas, you’re welcome’, and I respect the commitment to seasonal joy.

Everyone is beautiful, everyone learns a lesson, and everyone lives happily ever after; exactly what you want from a Christmas film as long as your children don’t walk away thinking divorced parents are going to magically reconcile just because it snowed a bit and someone baked a cookie.

Rating: 8/10. Loses two points only because it may give false hope to co-parented children everywhere.

Jingle Bell Heist

The premise: an American woman and a British man meet, exchange roughly three sentences, and immediately decide that the logical next step is… robbing a London department store together. As you do. It’s Christmas! Crime is festive if you add twinkly lights.

It does feature Peter Serafinowicz and Amanda from Motherland, which briefly lulled me into a false sense of hope that this might be decent. But no. Their presence is more of a cameo-level warning that even talented actors need to pay their heating bills.

The baddie naturally gets his comeuppance, everyone else is suddenly happy, and Christmas is saved.

Is it good? No.

Did I watch the entire thing anyway? Also no – I watched it distractedly while scrolling my phone.

But is it a harmless 90 minutes of festive nonsense that won’t actively ruin your day? Yes.

Rating: A solid 5/10 for a Christmas film, 2/10 for a normal film.

Last Christmas

Featuring the woman with fantastically expressive eyebrows from Game of Thrones (Daenerys, but dressed as an elf) and produced by Emma actual national treasure Thompson, Last Christmas is one of those films I unapologetically adore.

Kate, having recently had a heart transplant, is drifting through life like a hungover pigeon; selfish, flaky, mildly chaotic, and working in a Covent Garden Christmas shop that is absolutely a front for some sort of jaunty money-laundering operation. No shop sells baubles year-round without something dodgy happening out the back, but fine, we’ll allow it. Christmas magic, etc.

Enter: the handsome, mysterious stranger who appears out of nowhere, says mildly profound things while wearing a nice coat, and somehow convinces her to sort her life out. But is he really a stranger? Of course not. This is a Christmas film. There are RULES.

George Michael music is wedged into every available gap; the soundtrack is basically Wham! fanfiction, and unless your heart is carved from granite, you will cry. Probably twice. Maybe three times if you’ve had wine.

Rating: 9/10

The Secret Santa

This one has truly the most deranged plot of any Christmas film I’ve watched this year, and yes, I kindly live-messaged the entire fever dream to my boyfriend, who did not appreciate my dedication to the art.

Our heroine: Plucky Single Mum Who Used to Be a Punk Rock Star. The problem: Her daughter has been accepted into Snowboarding Academy (apparently a thing??), but she can’t afford the fees. Tragic.

BUT WAIT! She’ll get 50% off if she works at the resort.

Great! Except the only role available is… Santa.

Fortunately, her gay brother(s) are Hollywood-level costumers (obviously) and they whip her up an uber-convincing prosthetic Santa face. Naturally, the resort takes her on with zero DBS checks, because realism is dead.

The owner’s son has a crush on her – as herself, thankfully, not as Santa. But he does keep confiding in Santa, because apparently chatting to a jolly old man in a beard helps him unpack his emotions.

Which does raise the uncomfortable question: Is Santa giving him an inappropriate boner? We simply don’t have time to explore that fully.

Anyway, they fall in love, her true identity is uncovered by one of the sisters from Sister, Sister, everyone forgives her immediately because the runtime is nearly up, and Christmas triumphs once again over logic, HR protocol, and safeguarding standards.

Utter nonsense. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Rating: 7/10.

I Believe in Santa

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film quite this dreadful before, and I have watched some things. I’m no stranger to a bad Christmas movie; in fact, I consider myself something of a connoisseur of festive crap (see above). But this one? This one was dogshit of such purity I can barely believe that Netflix optioned it.

Netflix says: “After five happy months dating Tom, Lisa’s horrified to learn he’s obsessed with her least favourite holiday. Is it time to give Christmas another chance?”

Sounds harmless enough. Festive fluff. A bit of sparkle. A romance lightly dusted in fake snow and sexual tension.

Absolutely not.

First of all: the actors. I had never seen either of them before, which is probably for the best, because she spends the entire film looking like she’s being held at gunpoint off-camera, and he… look. He is quite clearly a gay man. Not in a subtle way. In a ‘did they cast him as a dare?’ way. I had to Google and it appears that the entire internet noticed this too, not just me.

There is absolutely zero romantic chemistry between this deeply in love couple; not even the bare minimum. Nothing. Nada. His makeup alone, which appears to be inspired by Donald Trump, is so distracting one could kept losing track of the plot if there was one.

Also, he lives with a much younger confirmed gay man who is supposedly just a friend. Sure, Jan.

There is no universe in which these two people are a rom-com couple and I REFUSE to be gaslit into accepting it. I want to swoon! I want charm! I want at least one person who doesn’t look like they’re fighting the urge to bolt between takes.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, comes the twist; the real twist, not the film’s.

They are married in real life.

So many questions. If this is how they behave when they’re meant to be falling in love, imagine the energy in their actual kitchen on a Tuesday morning.

And let’s talk pacing. This film is allegedly about discovering your boyfriend believes in Santa Claus, but would you like to know when any mention of Father Christmas finally arrives? Fifty minutes in.

The first 50 minutes are just endless scenes of these two charisma vacuums interacting like co-workers forced together at an HR-mandated away day. I’ve seen more romantic electricity between two people fighting over the last yellow sticker sandwich in Tesco.

The rest of the plot – him teaching her to love Christmas, bonding with her daughter etc – is largely irrelevant because I urge you not to waste your time. I Believe In Santa has literally no redeeming qualities.

Rating: 0/10. Absolutely not. Would rather watch my own Ring doorbell footage for two hours.

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