Holidate establishes some all-important vocabulary right off the bat: A “holidate” is someone to spend any given holiday with, explicitly for the purpose of not being alone and preventing your family members from trying to set you up with someone else. To be clear, it’s not a friends-with-benefits situation. If anything, it’s closer to a rental family, except it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement rather than something paid for. But while having a “holidate” is a fun idea, John Whitesell’s Holidate isn’t the kind of movie to bring home for the holidays.
Sloane (Emma Roberts) and Jackson (Luke Bracey) both hate Christmas. Sloane’s family won’t stop trying to introduce her to new men. Jackson, meanwhile, is Australian and doesn’t have any family in the States, and finds meeting new people over the holidays stressful. When the two of them meet while trying to return gifts at the same store, they immediately bond over their mutual distaste for holidays, and land upon the solution of the “holidate,” inspired by Sloane’s aunt Susan (Kristin Chenoweth), who always brings random men to family events but ditches them instantly. They plan to see each other at every holiday — Easter, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc. — and that will be that.
…Or so they think. But remember, this is a rom-com, so there are signs plastered everywhere indicating exactly where this platonic arrangement will lead. Early on in the film, Sloane even bemoans rom-coms that pretend that the leads won’t eventually get together. The scene is self-aware enough to be funny, but quickly undercut by how unaware and obvious the rest of the film is. The mindset that it’s particularly important to have a love interest on the holidays feels outdated in 2020. The characters’ views on romance are painfully outdated as well – even as Jackson and Sloane grow closer together, Jackson continues to argue the casually sexist view that “all women become crazy during the holidays,” and that it’s always the woman in any given heterosexual relationship who will demand commitment. On top of that regressive attitude, Holidate falls in the bland no-man’s land between being sharp enough to appeal to adults who like Bridesmaids and tame enough to watch with the whole family.
There are a few good jokes here and there, but it’s raunchiness that skews toward just being explicit rather than explicit and funny. The film never quite settles on a tone as it tries to mix its protagonists’ cynicism with its genre’s inherent cheer, and only Kristin Chenoweth, playing her character as kookily and dramatically as possible, and Alex Moffat, playing Sloane’s quipping brother, are the only actors who seem to be having any fun with their roles. By contrast, the predictability of the trajectory Sloane and Jackson are set on might be forgivable if Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey had any palpable form of chemistry, but, unfortunately, they never really mesh. Their banter is fun – at a New Year’s party, for example, they spend the night people-watching and making snide comments about them – but when it comes to romance, the script veers into clunky territory. The mugging and overacting ramp up as the film progresses, and never gets any less tiresome. The environments never feel lived in, either, as they are either too bright and Hallmark Christmas Movie-inspired or too dull and boring to be realistic. It seems like, aside from the supporting cast, the only real saving grace is Dan the Automator’s soundtrack, which echoes his other musical contributions and supports the tone of the scene no matter what it is.
Ultimately, Holidate is just not memorable enough, and it’s a little too out there to be safe as background noise for real-life family gatherings. Though the central idea is fun, everything that’s been built around it feels outdated. By comparison with Netflix’s other upcoming holiday fare, which includes Kurt Russell’s return as Hot Santa in The Christmas Chronicles 2, Holidate just fails to make a case for itself as a new Christmas classic.
1.5/5 STARS