The ex-teen heartthrob plays a single father who enters into an unlikely romance with a pop star in a milquetoast yet watchable romance
Say what you will about Netflix’s latest yuletide offering, you can’t file a truth-in-advertising complaint. Christmas With You could hardly be a more generic title, and the 90-minute bundle of anodyne cheer lives up to its vanilla promise.
As is often the case with low-budget, high-tinsel end-of-year films, it’s more vibe than narrative, more sweatpants than sequin frock. While some holiday specials thrive on the preposterous setups (who isn’t looking forward to Lifetime’s foreign adventure Merry Swissmas, or the Hallmark Channel’s upcoming film about an MI5 agent who goes undercover as the royal nanny over the winter hols?), Christmas With You keeps it simple and sticks with being more or less an excuse to bop around with the jolly trio who anchor the production. There’s Cristina (Deja Monique Cruz), a high school girl about to have her quiñcenera, her widowed father (Freddie Prinze Jr, who’s come into the cold from the voice work that has kept him employed of late), and a Latina pop star named Angelina Costa (Aimee Garcia, of Dexter and Lucifer) who is struggling to compose a new hit or master the internet, and fading into obsolescence. In this version of the B-list celebrity world, musical artists who use Twitter are considered “very innovative”.
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