Skyler Orton
Most people have at least a passing familiarity with the holiday romcom genre. Following tropes set out by companies like Hallmark, these movies are very popular. There have also been so many of them released over the years that studios have resorted to increasingly ridiculous concepts. Here are the five craziest that I could find.
5. The Knight Before Christmas (2019)
The Knight Before Christmas is in many ways very similar to the basic outline of a holiday romcom. One lead moves locations and falls in love with the other lead all while learning the true meaning of Christmas. However, instead of a tech executive moving back to a small town and falling in love with a hardware store owner or something, a medieval knight gets transported to modern America by a sorceress and falls in love with a science teacher.
It’s all a bit high concept for your typical romcom but it really shows the lengths that studios are going to nowadays. Also it seemingly is a part of a Netflix holiday romcom cinematic universe with the (also absurd) Christmas Prince series of movies. I’d watch that version of Avengers Endgame where a bunch of suspiciously similar looking couples fight against whatever the opposite of Christmas is.
4. Christmas Above the Clouds (2025)
Christmas Above the Clouds is a movie with a simple sales pitch that quickly gets less simple the further you read. A modern retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but with a CEO is a basic concept and it worked fairly well in Apple TV’s Spirited. Having it take place primarily on a plane… is certainly a choice.
That being said this is also a romcom so our CEO protagonist must reconcile with her ex and learn the true meaning of Christmas along the way. Also for no apparent reason the plane is going to Australia giving the cast an excuse to work their worst Australian accents. Also I have to shout out the absurd reference to Casablanca: “Of all the luxury first-class pods in all the jumbo jets in the world, you walk into mine”.
3. Holiday in Handcuffs (2007)
Holiday in Handcuffs is a film that doesn’t feel like it should be real. A mild mannered waitress kidnaps one of her customers to bring him home to meet her parents. As is only natural in this genre Mario Lopez’s innocent victim character quickly develops Stockholm syndrome for his kidnapper.
I will say that this movie’s absurd premise means it doesn’t fully fall prey to the stereotypes of a normal Hallmark style movie. Where other movies on this list take an absurd premise but don’t do anything interesting, this movie at least has some fantastic one liners. A highlight for sure is “I hope you aren’t expecting a lot from Santa. A federal offense probably puts you on the naughty list this year.”
2. Last Christmas (2019)
To fully explain why the plot to the movie Last Christmas is to spoil it. So if you genuinely enjoy this genre of movie and might want to watch it, you can skip right ahead to the next item on this list. However, on a fundamental level this movie is baffling.
A basic summary is that someone thought it would be a good idea to take the lyrics from the song “Last Christmas” incredibly literally to an uncomfortable level. The famous lyric “Last Christmas I gave you my heart” to be specific. In this movie Emilia Clarke plays Kate, an elf in a year round Christmas store who meets Tom, the man of her dreams. Pretty basic fare for the genre, but when it’s revealed that Kate had a heart transplant almost a year ago things get real weird. As it turns out Tom is the ghost of her heart donor and this whole time Kate was the only one who could see him. An insane plot twist that’s way out of left field but it’s not one I’m sad about since it’s deeply weird on a level I find very funny.
1. Hot Frosty
Netflix may truly be the new kings of the genre at this point. Hot Frosty is a movie that defies all expectations and honestly just feels like somebody came up with as a joke while high and then committed to the bit until it got made into a feature-length movie. Essentially what if Frosty the snowman was, well, “hot”… and we made a romcom out of it. Jack, our Frosty stand-in, comes to life after Cathy, a grieving widower, puts her scarf on an ice sculpture while out walking. So naturally the pair fall in love since this is a holiday romcom. However the more you think about this movie the more the concept spectacularly falls apart.
For example, Jack was essentially just born and has the mind of a child. Does that make it kind of weird to have a romcom with essentially a child playing one of the leads? Yes…yes it does. Is it weird that no one in the town questions where this man came from? Yes…yes it is.
It all clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously which in some ways makes it the ultimate bad holiday movie. I have to specifically shout out the part where a doctor medically confirms that Jack is in fact a snowman and the entire town agrees it was Christmas magic.
This is our list, but there are thousands of holiday movies. Are there any we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
