Marathon Viewing This Year's Festive Features: The Hits, The Misses, and The Guilty Pleasures.
It is the time of year to relax on the sofa and consume a packet of festive treats in front of a terrific flick, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.
As always, a batch of latest holiday movies strives to join part of our festive viewing—potentially even joining the ranks alongside enduring classics like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (no arguments).
So, in a noble effort to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the festive feeling, I marathoned as many fresh Christmas films as possible in a single day.
Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie
Kicking off, optimistically, on a good foot. This is the exclusive 2025 entry on a well-known aggregator's list of the top 100 festive features of all time.
The popular band are trapped in the UK after wrapping up their global concert series and must make it back for Christmas. Their attempts are hindered by an malevolent Father Christmas, who sings to state they won’t get home until they “rekindle their brotherly magic.”
The banter between the arguing trio is entertaining even for the non-fan, while followers will no doubt pick up on lots of easter eggs as they endeavor to get back using every mode of travel possible.
It’s a journey of epic proportions.
It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is excellent for fans and a solid start to the day.
Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who will have to sit through it.
Late Morning: Tinsel Town
Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland stars as a Hollywood star roped into a pantomime.
“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and older lead Brad Mack, who has hit a rough patch and whose agent has misled him into thinking he’s starring in prestigious English theatre.
His Aladdin fellow actors let him know he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he protests. You can guess their response. Unless you’re ignorant of traditional stage call-and-response.
There are some great jokes, some cockle-warming side stories, and the rest of the cast is excellent, too.
It’s the type of film that would be a bit cheesy at another season, but is a lot of fun at Christmas.
Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄
A New Spin on Scrooge
A familiar face shows up at the start of this film, too, calling someone a mug for the second consecutive movie. Is this a fresh holiday staple?
This time, he’s a musical taxi operator who encounters Mr Sood, the newest interpretation on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Mr Sood is played by an actor from Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the director of Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story progresses as the stingy Mr Sood is visited by the apparitions of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.
This South Asian reinterpretation is at least unique from all the others, but sadly he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s acting is flat—a problem when he’s so central to everything.
Festive score: 🎄🎄
Noon: A BBC Special
There's just enough time for a network's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”
But after he gets an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) convinces him blowing the money on a holiday to Lapland.
There’s just one problem—he discovers there was an mix-up with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to figure out how to reimburse the remainder.
Enjoyable but forgettable.
Festive score: 🎄🎄
Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems
This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the background—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.
Driven corporate star Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is sent to a country estate to do a deal for a champagne business. On the way, she meets a man in a book store who promises to show her Christmas in Paris.
An expert recently declared this is the finest new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a holiday love story with a hint of sophistication and gives the necessary warm and fuzzy feels.
The scene with a extended debate about Die Hard is particularly strong too.
Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄
3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas
Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, despite the persuasion of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.
The truth is to be discovered, and Chris sets out to find it with the expert help of a team of well-known scientists and personalities.
It’s low-key but endearing, and perfect viewing while anticipating Santa to visit.
Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄
Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.
Michelle Pfeiffer is the matriarch of a quarrelling American family who gather for the holidays—including other Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.
Pfeiffer begins by referencing holiday staples like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before saying: “They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays—moms.”
So that’s the concept, but in reality it’s really a jumble of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character finally comes into her own.
Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄
6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret
The day’s taken a dip, but thankfully here’s a new addition in the packed genre of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—seasonal comfort food.
It’s a narrative as old as time: An American woman journeys to a far-off wintery locale and ends up stumbling across romance.
In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher