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

At the risk of come across as the Grinch, one must lament the early release of holiday films before Thanksgiving. Even as the weather cools, it feels premature to fully indulge in the platform’s annual buffet of low-cost holiday entertainment.

Like American chocolates that no longer contain genuine cocoa, the service’s holiday movies are relied upon for their style of mediocrity. They offer rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, modest spending, artificial winter scenes, and unbelievable plots. At worst, these movies are forgettable train wrecks; in the best scenarios, they are forgettable fun.

Champagne Problems, the latest holiday concoction, blends into the broad center of the forgettable spectrum. Directed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose last Netflix romcom was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like low-quality champagne – fittingly lackluster and situational.

It begins with what looks like an AI-generated ad for supermarket sparkling wine. This ad is actually the pitch of the main character, portrayed by the actress, to her coworkers at the Roth Group. Sydney is the stereotypical image of a career woman – overlooked, phone-obsessed, and ambitious to the harm of her personal life. After her superior sends her to Paris to finalize an acquisition over Christmas, her sibling makes her promise take one night in Paris to enjoy life.

Naturally, Paris is the ideal location to pull someone from Google Maps, despite Paris is covered in unconvincing digital snowfall. At a absurdly cutesy bookstore, Sydney meet-cutes with the male lead, and he pulls her away from her phone. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she initially resists this ideal guy for frivolous excuses.

Just as predictable are the film elements that proceed at abrupt quarter turns, mirroring the rotation of old sparkling wine in the cellars of Chateau Cassel. The twist? The love interest is the successor to Chateau Cassel, hesitant to run it and bitter toward his dad for putting it up for sale. In perhaps the movie’s biggest addition to romantic comedies, he is highly critical of corporate buyouts. The conflict? The heroine truly thinks she’s not stripping this family-owned company for parts, competing against three stereotypical rivals: a stern Frenchwoman, a rigid German, and a delusional gay billionaire.

The twist? Sydney’s shady colleague the office rival appears without warning. The grist? The two leads gaze longingly at one another in holiday pajamas, across a huge divide in financial perspective.

The gift and the curse is that none of this lingers beyond a bubbly buzz on an unfilled belly. There’s a lack of substantial content – Minka Kelly, most famous for her part in Friday Night Lights, delivers a strictly serviceable portrayal, superficially pleasant and gestures of care, more maternal than romantic lead. The male star provides exactly the dollop of Gallic appeal with light inner conflict and nothing more. The gimmicks are not amusing, the romance is harmless, and the ending is straightforward.

For all its philosophizing on the exclusivity of champagne, no one is pretending it is anything other than a mass market item. The flaws are the very reasons some enjoy it. It’s fair to say an expert’s opinion about the film a champagne problem.

• Champagne Problems can be streamed on Netflix.