A boy they call Precarious Labor
If you want to know how Santa Claus came about, in a film for the whole family, the script of which was created by combining completely random snippets of other films, then definitely don’t miss the Boy They Call Christmas. Taking a terribly serious film, the film acts as a barren warning of xenophobia and at the same time carries the message that money is not everything – it is enough for Santa to bring you a few presents once a year and you can spend the rest of the year in poverty, but with “hope in heart”.
The boy Nicolas, who has the mysterious nickname of Christmas, suffers one blow of fate after another, only to finally give up his efforts and submit to the king’s whimsical whims. He does not want to provide affordable health care to the inhabitants of the kingdom, but would like to experience some magic. He therefore sends volunteers to the elven city, and because they have no bread, they risk their lives and go through the mountains, mines and their moral principles.
Here the picture warns us: Attention, attention! You may be in indebtedness, which cannot provide its children with basic needs, but still better to die in poverty than to try anything at all. At least in the eyes of others you will maintain the position of the “noble poor”. Don’t take any action, don’t unite, wait for the boy called Christmas until he breaks into your cottage and puts a turnip doll made by the colonized elves on a pierced blanket. I can’t imagine a more depressing ending than the one in which the future Santa accepts from the king an evidently precarious position as a “hope” spreader to cover up the government’s reluctance to improve the living conditions of the country’s inhabitants in any way. The demonstration of the total emptiness of Christmas has never been so obvious.
Tartan slavery at the Christmas castle
Did anyone say “little tartan”? In the film Christmas Castle, let’s go to the Scottish countryside together, where the locals have classic checkered patterns reflected in their pupils. This time we have the story of a poor aristocracy saved by a rich upper class. The main heroine is the author of love novels, who decides to solve the failure of her latest book by going out in the countryside to her own roots. However, he meets the “naughty lord of the castle”, whom he loves as much as he hates.
Peeping is sad. The subjects, who disguise themselves as the peaceful free inhabitants of the village, farm on the castle lands, which they can lose at any time. Escape looking in knitting. Only in the middle of colored yarns does their difficult life situation and limited social life (because there are about eight people living in the whole village) seem bearable. The main heroine, whose biggest problem is that Drew Barrymore criticized her for the new book, will also provide their know-how.
How will it all turn out? The writer receives a wool sweater from the inhabitants and as a reward she becomes the new ruler over their insignificant lives. Residents accept it with enthusiasm and return to knitting.
Catfishing as the pinnacle of romance
If there is no stereotyping of Scotland and an elegant middle-aged couple your cup of whiskey, Love Trap is offered. The romantic film starring Nina Nobrev not only tells us that catfishing is excusable, but it also sends a clear signal: lying, blackmail and cheating can bring you love for life. All this in the presence of passively aggressive carols, with which the main characters terrorize their neighbors.
With its original title (Love Hard), the film refers to two cult Christmas films: Love Actually and Die Hard. But don’t expect sophisticated mash-ups from this romcom. These are basically just two movies that the main characters either like or don’t like. The young journalist Natalie hates Love in Heaven because of her sexism, which must be credited to her, because otherwise she behaves absolutely horribly in the film. He considers the Death Trap to be the best Christmas movie. Her counterpart, who does not consider the action classic with Bruce Willis to be a Christmas film at all, emphasizes Heavenly Love as the ultimate romance and behaves accordingly, idiot.
In the online application, where he meets Natalie, he pretends to be a more beautiful and successful friend, and when Natalie decides to surprise him with her visit at Christmas, she solves the situation really elegantly. At first, he blackmails Natalia by using her love for the “real” Josh and then appeals to her weakness for outsiders. He makes himself a misunderstood poor man, whose father won’t let him make candles with the scent of a dead grandfather (really!) And instead wants him to work in the family business. Although the father in question obviously doesn’t care what career his son chooses.
The adoration of manipulative techniques, the systematic use of which can be remedied by one grandiose apology, sometimes pretends to be a critique of sexist romcom patterns. In reality, however, it confirms them and sometimes goes beyond the twenty-year-old Love of Heaven, which can apologize at least in a different atmosphere of the time. At the end, you will see a “sign scene” and the whole thing is so stupid that I really do not recommend the film to anyone who does not have a great weakness for secondary feelings of embarrassment.
Being single is a brand
Netflix’s latest addition is Like a Pole in a Fence, in the original Single All the Way. The first Christmas movie of the streaming platform, which has gay characters in its midst, pleased a lot of people. It was really time – two male heroes had to wait six years and 27 pictures for their own romance. (You won’t come across a lesbian Christmas romance on Netflix yet, but you can have last year’s Happy and Merry with Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis on rival HBO!). I just wish this hacking of heteronormativity would take place without the annoying and harmful cliché of “being single is worse than death,” but what else, we obviously can’t have everything.
Two long-time roommates and friends – Nick and Peter – come to Peter’s parents at Christmas, who have long longed for Peter to settle down. Fortunately, the awful idea that they would pretend to have a relationship so that Peter has peace from his family will not work out, but of course everything gets tangled up completely differently.
The family simply doesn’t give up and first tries to get him the only gay man in town, but then the other half of the family notices that there is “obvious chemistry” between Nick and Peter himself and decides to put them together, despite their protests and legitimate concerns. . The complete absence of respect for the wishes and feelings of their loved ones and the violent pairing of people who happen to be in no relationship – these are the Christmas values that Peter’s family professes above all. The film also shows that if you don’t get on with life in the city, the solution is to simply move to the village. Not only is there cheaper rent and less competition, but you can also be as close as possible to your disrespecting family.
Princess from the solidarity patisserie
Surprisingly, the third part of this year’s Christmas feature film on Netflix remains the third part of Princess of the Confectionery with the subtitle Star Romance, which is an infantile, but quite pleasant heist film with Vanessa Hudgens’s three-role film. It is definitely the most screenwriting and directing of the film, which not only follows in the footsteps of its previous sympathetically naive works, but also goes beyond them in many ways. He managed to rob a three-dimensional creature with his own believable backstory from a one-dimensional negative from the previous film, which he is now putting at the center of events. It not only humanizes her, but even forces you to care about this complex woman in very tight clothes.
Behind the story of a stolen poinsettia, which the Kingdom of Belgium borrowed from the Vatican to decorate an aristocratic tree, lies the message of breaking broken family ties, forgiveness and formative childhood experiences. It is the only film mentioned so far that focuses on solidarity, providing second chances and family belonging, which is not limited to the nuclear family. If I should choose a single film from this year’s Christmas cringe that you should not miss, then this is definitely the third part of Princess of the Confectionery.
Robin is not a mouse and we are not commodities
And finally, one delicacy: the animated half-hour film Robin is not a mouse is definitely the cutest Christmas thing you can see on Netflix. The film about what it means to fit in, what it’s like to be an adopted child, and about how empty shopping for Christmas presents is, seems like a revelation to the rest of the Christmas selection. To get some great music numbers in thirty minutes, a magpie that fills a hole in its heart with stolen trinkets and most of all longs for a poinsettia, while little mice try to find enough crumbs to survive the Christmas holidays, it’s not a given. Give it to yourself.
So what do all the Netflix Christmas movies say about today’s demands? That it is normal not to be single, to go hard on your own and not to look left or right. All year round to misery and to be grateful at Christmas for a few trinkets under the tree in installments from Provident. But even in this bleak world, moments of hope sometimes shine – and they are not glittering poinsettias on tree tops, but highlights of meaningful interpersonal relationships in which people are not just commodities that can be exchanged, exploited, and paired.
The author works in film marketing and dramaturgy.
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