Binge-Watching 2025's Holiday Movies: The Good, The Bad and The So-Bad-It's-Good.

‘Tis the time of year to lounge on the couch and consume a packet of holiday pastries in front of a terrific flick, a awful feature, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

This year, a crop of fresh holiday movies strives to join part of our holiday traditions—maybe even finding a spot alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

Therefore, in a helpful attempt to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the festive feeling, I binged as many fresh festive movies as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Kicking off, optimistically, on a high. This is the only 2025 movie on a well-known aggregator's list of the top 100 festive features of all time.

The popular band find themselves stuck in the UK after wrapping up their world tour and must get home for Christmas. Their attempts are hindered by an malevolent Father Christmas, who bursts into melody to announce they won’t get home until they “rediscover their brotherly magic.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is enjoyable even for the non-fan, while devotees will certainly notice lots of in-jokes as they endeavor to get back using all transportation available.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is great for devotees and a good start to the day.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their family members who are obliged to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor roped into a "panto".

“A what's a panto??” asks Sutherland’s “temperamental” and older lead Brad Mack, who has hit a rough patch and whose agent has deceived him into thinking he’s appearing in prestigious English theatre.

His pantomime fellow actors inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he retorts. You can guess their response. Unless you’re ignorant of traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some great jokes, some touching sub-plots, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.

It’s the type of film that would be a bit cheesy at a different time, but is a lot of fun at Christmas.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

A familiar face shows up at the start of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the second consecutive movie. Could this be a fresh holiday staple?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who picks up Mr Sood, the latest spin on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by an actor from Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The well-known tale develops as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is visited by the spirits of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least different from all the others, but sadly he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s acting is wooden—a significant issue when he’s so the focal point.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

There's just enough time for a major broadcaster's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he gets an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (starring Morgana Robinson) talks him into splurging the cash on a vacation to Lapland.

There’s just one issue—he discovers there was an error with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to devise a plan for how to pay back the remainder.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the tree, fairy lights and snow are in the background—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels comfortable and seasonal all the same.

High-powered businesswoman Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is assigned to a French chateau to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. En route, she encounters a man in a bookshop who promises to show her Christmas in Paris.

A commentator recently stated this is the best new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a festive dalliance with a touch of class and gives the required cozy feelings.

The scene with a extended debate about Die Hard is notable too.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, continues to believe in Father Christmas, regardless of the attempts of his dad (starring James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

The truth is to be discovered, and Chris ventures forth to find it with the assistance of a group of well-known experts and celebrities.

It’s gentle but endearing, and perfect viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

A Star-Studded Family Drama

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother of a quarrelling American family who reunite for the holidays—including other Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer starts by mentioning holiday staples like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before declaring: “They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s the concept, but in practice it’s really a combination of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last takes center stage.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Formulaic Fun

The day’s taken a dip, but thankfully here’s a new offering in the saturated market of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and strangely compelling—festive fodder.

It’s a narrative as old as time: An American woman goes on a quest to a picturesque cold country and ends up discovering romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher