Champagne Problems Review – The Streaming Giant’s Newest Holiday Romcom Lacks Fizz.

At the risk of come across as a holiday cynic, it’s hard not to lament the premature arrival of holiday films prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. While the weather cools, it seems premature to fully indulge in Netflix’s yearly buffet of low-cost festive treats.

Similar to US candy which don’t contain genuine cocoa, Netflix’s Christmas movies are counted on for their brand of mediocrity. They provide rote familiarity – nostalgic casting, low budgets, fake snow, and unbelievable plots. In the worst cases, these films are unmemorable disasters; in the best scenarios, they are lighthearted distractions.

Champagne Problems, the newest holiday offering, blends into the vast middle of unremarkable territory. Helmed by the filmmaker, whose previous romantic comedy was utterly forgettable, this movie feels like low-quality champagne – appropriately flat and context-dependent.

It begins with what looks like a computer-made commercial for supermarket sparkling wine. This commercial is actually the pitch of the main character, played by Minka Kelly, 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 detriment of her private world. After her boss sends her to Paris to close a deal over Christmas, her sister insists she take one night in Paris to enjoy life.

Of course, Paris is the perfect place to pull someone from digital navigation, even when the city is draped with below-grade CGI snow. In an overly quaint bookshop, Sydney meet-cutes with Henri Cassell, who distracts her from her device. As demanded by rom-com conventions, she at first rejects this ideal guy for frivolous excuses.

Equally as expected are the movie mechanics that proceed at sudden shifts, mirroring the rotation of old sparkling wine in the vaults of the family vineyard. The twist? The love interest is the successor to Chateau Cassel, hesitant to run it and resentful toward his dad for putting it up for sale. Maybe the movie’s most salient contribution to romantic comedies, Henri is extremely judgmental of corporate buyouts. The conflict? The heroine sincerely believes she’s not stripping the ancestral business for profit, vying against three caricatures: a stern Frenchwoman, a severe blonde German man, and a delusional gay billionaire.

The twist? Her shady colleague the office rival appears without warning. The grist? Henri and Sydney look yearningly at one another in holiday pajamas, despite a huge divide in financial perspective.

The gift and the curse is that nothing here sticks beyond a bubbly buzz on an empty stomach. There’s a lack of real absorbent filler – the lead actress, still best known for her role in Friday Night Lights, delivers a strictly serviceable performance, superficially pleasant and acts of kindness, almost motherly than love interest material. The male star offers just the right amount of French charm with mild self-torture and nothing more. The gimmicks are unfunny, the love story is inoffensive, and the ending is predictable.

For all its philosophizing on the luxury of champagne, nobody claims this is anything other than a mass market item. The things to hate are the very reasons some enjoy it. One might call a critic’s feelings about the film a champagne problem.

• Champagne Problems can be streamed on the platform.