Holidate Begins Holiday Movie Season on Netflix
Written By Matthew Sadowski
Over the Halloween weekend, Holidate, essentially a Christmas movie, was somehow the Number One movie on Netflix. Perhaps this was due to the lack of Halloween experiences this year, since everyone was locked up inside. No Trick-or-Treaters, no Haunted Houses, no parties. A movie about meeting up with “someone special” in order to not feel so alone appeals to the warmth we all seek these days. However, I cannot recommend watching Holidate to feel that warmth.
The film stars Emma Roberts as Sloane, a perpetually single twenty-something who is tired of showing up to holiday parties without a date. Indeed, her turbulent dating life is frequently the topic of conversations with her overbearing mother, Elaine (Frances Fisher), and well-meaning sister, Abby (Jessica Capshaw). On the other side of town, the handsome Jackson (Luke Bracey), realizes that he hates the intense emotions that always accompany dating someone around the holidays. After a chance meeting in the mall and some in-depth airing of grievances, the pair decides to become each other’s “holidate,” a nonromantic, nonsexual companion strictly for going to holiday parties with. As those around them begin to fall in love and fate keeps bringing them closer, the two must decide if they want to spend more time together than just a few days out of the year.
You don’t need to have studied storytelling all of your life to figure out where most romantic comedies are leading, and Holidate is no exception. The trick to a good romantic comedy is in the interplay between the two potential lovers. In When Harry Met Sally… for instance, the script has fun with the “opposites attract” rule and allows the leads’ differing performances to play off of each other until the two have grown so accustomed to the other’s quirks, that they cannot stand to be apart. In Holidate, Sloane and Jackson are basically the same all the way through, equally cynical, equally predictable, and equally in denial. A good chunk of their dialogue is devoted to either agreeing in their criticisms of romantic expectations or defining what a holidate is (“Mother’s Day is technically a holiday!”). Beyond their most superficial romantic or sexual preferences, we learn very little about the couple’s lives and habits that make other romantic comedy characters so endearing.
Ironically, it’s perfect for Halloween: it’s all about appearances.
Holidate
Directed by: Josh Whitesell
Starring: Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, Kristin Chenoweth, Frances Fisher
2020
103 minutes
Streaming on: Netflix
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