Champagne Problems Review – Netflix’s Newest Christmas Romantic Comedy Misses the Sparkle.

Without wanting to sound like the Grinch, one must bemoan the early arrival of Christmas films prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. Even as temperatures drop, it feels too soon to completely immerse in the platform’s yearly feast of cheap festive treats.

Similar to US candy that no longer contain real chocolate, the service’s Christmas films are counted on for their brand of mediocrity. They offer rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, low budgets, artificial winter scenes, and absurd premises. At worst, these movies are unmemorable disasters; at best, they are lighthearted distractions.

The new Netflix film, the latest holiday concoction, blends into the vast middle of unremarkable territory. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like low-quality champagne – appropriately flat and context-dependent.

It begins with what looks like an AI-generated ad for drug store brand champagne. This ad is actually the proposal of the main character, played by the actress, to her coworkers at the Roth Group. The protagonist is the construction paper cut-out of a professional female – overlooked, phone-obsessed, and driven to the harm of her private world. When her boss dispatches her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over the holidays, her sibling makes her promise spend an evening in Paris to live for herself.

Of course, the French capital is the perfect place to pull someone from Google Maps, even when the city is draped with unconvincing digital snowfall. In an absurdly cutesy bookshop, the lead has a charming encounter with the male lead, who distracts her from her device. Following rom-com conventions, she at first rejects this ideal guy for silly reasons.

Equally as expected are the movie mechanics that unfold at sudden shifts, reflecting the rotation of aging champagne bottles in the vaults of Chateau Cassel. The twist? The love interest is the successor to the estate, hesitant to manage it and resentful toward his dad for putting it up for sale. In perhaps the film’s biggest addition to romantic comedies, he is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The conflict? Sydney truly thinks she’s not stripping this family-owned company for profit, vying against three caricatures: a stern Frenchwoman, a severe blonde German man, and an out-of-touch wealthy man.

The development? Her shady colleague Ryan appears without warning. The core? Henri and Sydney look yearningly at each other in holiday pajamas, despite a huge divide in financial perspective.

The gift and the curse is that none of this lingers longer than a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of real absorbent filler – Minka Kelly, most famous for her part in the TV series, delivers a merely adequate performance, all sweet surfaces and gestures of care, more maternal than love interest material. Tom Wozniczka provides exactly the dollop of French charm with light inner conflict and nothing more. The tricks are not amusing, the romance is harmless, and the ending is straightforward.

Despite its philosophizing on the luxury of champagne, nobody claims it is anything but a mass market item. The flaws are also the things to like. It’s fair to say an expert’s opinion about the film a champagne problem.

• Champagne Problems is now available on Netflix.