I’ve written about this film before, but I fear my review of three years ago fell short of its intended purpose. A friend of mine, a fellow writer whose opinion I greatly respect, watched it on my recommendation, and she hated it.

It could be due to an age difference, I suppose. Christmas Crush has what I think of as a millennial sensibility. Joke-y, banter-y, with lots of cultural references in the dialogue. It’s a bit like Adam Bertocci’s writing, and as I’ve mentioned before, Bertocci’s fiction is what I consider quintessentially millennial.

And let’s face it: we millennials are a polarizing bunch. Our culture is one people either love or hate. So it is with Christmas Crush. It is not by any means a complicated story. The plot is simple: a woman named Addie has a crush on her next-door neighbor, Sam. She makes a wish that her next-door neighbor will fall in love with her.

Unfortunately, her careless wording results in the wish being misapplied, and her other next-door neighbor, a man named Pete who is engaged to be married shortly after Christmas, falls in love with her. What follows is a series of humorous episodes as Addie tries to undo her wish and make the lovestruck Pete go back to his fiancée, Gina. All the while, trying not to give Sam the impression she’s two-timing him.

Such is the basic synopsis. Nothing earth-shattering, I’m sure you’ll agree. But as Chuck Litka reminds us, why does every story need to have high-stakes? Isn’t the future happiness of the characters reason enough to care about them?

So why do I like the film so much? Well, let us count the reasons:

#1: I’m Sick Of The Grimdark

“Grimdark!” Isn’t that a wonderful word? It comes to us from the world of Warhammer 40K, a science-fiction universe where life is nasty, brutish, and short. But there are countless films, books, TV series, etc. that feature the grimdark aesthetic. It’s got to where it’s seeping into everything. They made a horror spin-off of Winnie the Pooh, for crying out loud.

Now, I don’t mind a bit of darkness in my stories. I regularly re-read H.P. Lovecraft, you know. But recall the Duke of Dunstable’s speech from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience:

Duke. Tell me, Major, are you fond of toffee?

Major. Very!

Duke. Yes, and toffee in moderation is a capital thing. But to live on toffee – toffee for breakfast, toffee for dinner, toffee for tea – to have it supposed that you care for nothing but toffee, and that you would consider yourself insulted if anything but toffee were offered to you – how would you like that?

For “toffee,” read “grimdark.” At some point, the consensus in the entertainment industry became that nothing wholly pleasant can be allowed to exist. Or if it does exist, it should be mocked. And that is why everything became saturated with gloom and serial killers.

Christmas Crush, like any good Christmas movie, is not grim. Even when Addie’s spirits are at their lowest, the mood is still one of holiday cheer. Also, Hollywood, if you’re reading this: it’s in color!

#2: Sincerity 

Now, I have to be careful with this one, because even Christmas Crush has its share of ironic humor. That banter I referred to above can’t exist without a certain style of comedy that relies on a developed sense of irony. To a degree, this goes hand-in-hand with that millennial sensibility I alluded to earlier, and is again something Christmas Crush shares with the works of Bertocci. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Zachary Shatzer is the millennial P.G. Wodehouse, and Bertocci is the millennial Oscar Wilde.)

But the conclusion of Christmas Crush is sincere, as all Christmas movies are.

I’ve got a theory that most people who watch these Christmas movies with a mocking eye secretly hope to be charmed. We actually want to see a nice, sweet story that is pleasant and predictable. But, our culture does not exactly reward wholesome content, so we mask our desire with a veneer of irony. And of course, a lot of the movies are quite silly, so it’s not like it’s hard to find things of which to make fun.

But, as Nietzsche said, “He who scoffs at Christmas movie cheesiness should take care that he does not become a cheesy Christmas movie antagonist. And when you hate-watch the Hallmark channel, know that the Hallmark channel also hate-watches you.”

Or something like that. The point is, once you get used to sneering at sincerity, you become immune to it. You can’t appreciate it, even when it is earned.

#3: …But Also Comedy

If you’ve made it this far into this post, you probably can at least tolerate comedy. But some people just aren’t into it. They will see no humor, for instance, in the scene where Pete’s jilted fianceé, working at a Christmas pop-up store to pay for her canceled wedding, tearfully greets customers with a somber, “Welcome to Santa’s Ho-ho-holiday emporium, the happiest place south of the North Pole.” They will not delight in the numerous references to the holiday event that Addie and her friend Drea are planning for a client named Donner as “the Donner party,” before hastily correcting themselves.

Obviously, there are many different kinds of comedy. For Christmas Crush, you’ve got to like wordplay and maybe a dash of light slapstick. If these don’t do it for you, then probably Christmas Crush will fall flat. Actually, probably all of my top favorite Christmas movies (Fitzwilly, Jingle All The Way, and The Lion in Winter) will not work for you. And that’s okay.

#4: No Villain

So many movies feel obliged to give us a villain: the cheating fiancé, the wicked step-mother, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that in most stories, but in the spirit of the Christmas season, isn’t it nice to have a story where no one is motivated by evil intentions? Pete, even at his most obnoxious, is only doing what he is doing because a spell has twisted his inherently good nature. Gina, even when she is rude to Addie, only does so in reaction to understandable hurt feelings.

I don’t mind a good villain. But I also find it refreshing to have a story without one.

#5: Avoiding Clichés and Boring Romance Tropes

We all know how holiday movies rely on clichés. It’s a running joke on Twitter: how many movies are there where the overworked big-city something-or-other is forced to go to a small town for Christmas, where, despite her best efforts, she falls in love with the man of her dreams, who as often as not turns out to be the Prince of Monte Carlo traveling incognito?

Instead of Addie being a workaholic who finds love when she is whisked away to a bucolic setting, she actually likes her job, and finds love with the guy next door. And instead of bonding over something superficial, like, I don’t know, chocolate or something, Addie and Sam discover they actually have mutual interests in philanthropy. That’s something that can be a foundation for a relationship.

#6: Addie Takes Action

Instead of waiting around for the plot to resolve itself in her favor, Addie steps up and takes responsibility. At the end, she says something that is, by the standards of made-for-TV Christmas movies, rather profound:

To everyone in this room, I wish you all the courage to tell the people close to you how you really feel about them. Whether it’s your best friend, your fiancé, or even your next-door neighbor. Even if you’re scared. Even if you’re not sure if they feel the same. Because making a wish, even making a wish for Christmas, it’s not enough. You have to tell them. Because you don’t know what you might be losing if you don’t.

Now, I can’t live this past week over again. But I hope that next time–No. No, I have faith that I won’t make the same mistake again. 

Unlike so many stories of this type–or maybe of many types–Addie grows and learns over the course of the story. She realizes her mistakes, she admits them, and she vows to grow. Maybe you laugh and say that’s a low bar to clear for a story. Maybe it is. But ask yourself this: how many modern Hollywood blockbusters give us this level of character development?

#7: A Beginning, not an Ending

And what I like best of all is that at the end, it’s suggested that Addie and Sam will start dating. Not get engaged, not have a royal wedding, but maybe go out for coffee. I’m not saying whirlwind romances can’t happen, but in general, it makes far more sense for people to fall in love over a period of months or years, not a few days as so often happens in these things.

A real romance is a whole life-time long, and a wedding is just one stop along the way. So many stories treat it as the Final Boss, the last quest before the story ends. Real relationships seldom work in such a cut-and-dried manner, and that is what makes them magical.

Conclusion

Here, my case rests. It may be you are unmoved by all this. Like my friend, you might find Christmas Crush the most awful dreck. And, well, after all, you may be right. I may be crazy. But it just may be etc.

If this blog has an agenda–which I am not prepared to admit, but I say only if it does–that agenda is to convey to people that the media that is easy and accessible may not be the greatest art there is. To find great work takes great work.

The flip side of this is that you can find it anywhere, and sometimes in places where the critical consensus least expects it to be. Thus, we find that when our curators of High Culture are debating whether video games are art, some of the greatest stories being told in that form. And when we hear the voices of the taste-makers putting down made-for-TV Christmas movies, we wonder: are the lavish, big-budget productions of the major studios any better?

And of course, there is the humble indie book. We all know, beyond any doubt, that great stories are being told in the pages of little volumes sent out into the world by lone authors, supported by nothing more than their desire to tell them.

My technique when reviewing something is to try and forget, insofar as possible, how and where I found it, and evaluate it on its own terms, independent of who wrote it or whether or not fashionable people sing its praises, and simply ask myself if I like it.

(There is of course a final irony here in that, by publishing my opinion, I am in some measure trying to be one of those people who influences other peoples’ thoughts on the matter. And indeed, there have been times when I have had to ignore myself in order to evaluate something clearly.)

I don’t mind if anyone else’s opinion varies wildly from mine on these things. I am, indisputably, a highly idiosyncratic critic. There is only one key to reviewing anything, be it a Christmas rom-com or a war epic, a Renaissance painting or a video game, a big-name publishing house novel or an indie ebook; and that is to make sure that your opinion is authentically yours, not one that somebody else told you to have. It’s not as easy as it seems, but it’s more rewarding that way.