When you're still single in your 30s and your parents keep pressuring you to find someone to settle down with every time you visit home during the holidays, what would you do? Well, you get yourself a holidate.
Since the festive season is just around the corner again, people are looking for heartwarming romantic comedies to watch. This is why Netflix recently released Holidate, an original romantic comedy about two strangers who agree to be each other's platonic plus-ones for the entire year. However, before you decide to press the play button and share this movie with your whole family, be warned that Holidate might not exactly be a holiday treat.
Written by Tiffany Paulsen and directed by John Whitesell, Holidate stars American actress Emma Roberts as Sloane, a 30-something woman who hates the holidays because she has to see all her happy family members gathered in one place or hear about her little brother's -- York (Jake Manley) -- wedding announcement. However Sloane, who constantly finds herself, as a single woman, sitting at the kid's table or stuck with awkward dates soon notices that her free-spirited aunt Susan (Kristin Chenoweth) usually brings a holidate or a plus-one to each family function. She then decides to try the idea for herself which is how she meets Jackson (Luke Bracey), a handsome stranger, one particularly bad Christmas. Despite both of them just getting out of failed relationships in the recent past, Sloane and Jackson agree to be each other's dates for all holiday celebrations in the upcoming year. They try to remain good friends with no romance involved, however, the two soon develop real feelings for each other.
Judging from the movie title and its poster, Holidate looks like one of those cutesy, light-hearted romantic comedies that suits the whole family. The premise of the story -- the idea of having someone to go to all holiday events with -- is a pretty heart-warming concept, right? Yet, just a minute in, you realise that this may not exactly be a sweet movie. In fact, it's actually incredibly tasteless. Many of the jokes in Holidate revolve around profanity-riddled arguments and overtly sexual humour. The very first few scenes of the movie begin with Roberts' character Sloane smoking a cigarette while dropping the F-bomb about Christmas, followed by Bracey's character Jackson getting a complaint by his girlfriend in front of her whole family.
Emma Roberts as Sloane Reed and Luke Bracey as Jackson Pieretti. Photos © Netflix
She says: "I gave you a blowjob and you didn't even get me a present."
Despite this, I think this movie may have an audience, especially given the chemistry of the two leads. I thought both Roberts and Bracey worked well together in pushing boundaries regarding this kind of relationship. Roberts, who I have always found to be a good charismatic actor, brought a lot of energy to the film. Yet even with her presence, it doesn't save the movie from its poor writing and bad execution mainly due to the fact that a lot of the jokes were done more for the sake of being vulgar than anything else really. The movie uses raunchy jokes as a cover for the fact that at the end of the day, it's still a mediocre romantic comedy. Most of the jokes seem so forced and flat that I didn't even laugh once.
As we follow the duo over the course of almost a year and cover almost all of the major holidays, I'm sure the production must have had a bit of fun setting up for Christmas, New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving or even Mother's day with all the balloons, glitter, costumes and cakes. Yet, when it comes to the plot, unfortunately, this movie is dull and uninteresting. The storyline is very predictable and clichéd at best. You can tell exactly where it will go just 30 minutes in.
For example, when one of the characters begins to develop feelings, they have to hide it because they had made a promise not to have any emotional involvement, but that begins to bother them and from there every beat becomes familiar. And just like one of those worn-out rom-com formulas, there's the third act break-up and then a make-up speech in front of a giant Christmas tree -- urgh.
Unfortunately, I find Holidate fails at being a good rom-com. The film is incredibly messy and it was indeed a struggle to sit through. I had to stop several times to contemplate whether I should give up. While I think there will be an audience for this movie because of the cast, I personally wouldn't recommend it.
- Holidate
- Starring Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, Jessica Capshaw, Frances Fisher
- Directed by John Whitesell
- Now streaming on Netflix
