The three Christmas bauble

Sometimes a columnist must sacrifice himself for the good of the community, take a bullet to protect the troops or take a slap to prevent the weakest from falling in battle.

So it’s done, friends. I stepped up to the front to save you from a sneak attack of saccharine marshmallow and dripping feelings. This week, I gobbled up three of Netflix’s top five movies, which are brand-new Christmas TV movies featuring fallen Hollywood actors (we can’t get away with it), widowed and hyper-emotional protagonists the night before. of December 25 (classic), as well as grandmothers too involved in the emotional universe of their orphaned grandchildren (of course).

It is Christmas falls on time (Falling for Christmas) with Lindsay Lohan, Noelle’s diary (The Christmas Diary) with Justin Hartley, aka twin Kevin in This Is Usas well as’A Christmas together (Christmas With You) which brings back to the spotlight Freddie Prinze Jr, former darling of teen movies like She has it all and The Pact of Silence.

This perilous mission has been punctuated by funky sweaters that light up in the dark, ever-empty Starbucks coffee cups, and terrible snowstorms that lock the characters inside their super-decorated houses for three days.

This type of popular production, however, requires a different critical approach, adapted to the genre. In this cheesy, extra au gratin world, we no longer speak of a “good film” or an “excellent film”, but rather of the “best bad film”. The nuance is important.

Because we assume 100% that these cheap bluettes will not sneak into the Oscars, come on. We just hope to spend 90 minutes with our brains in jello, our feet on the pouf, that’s all.

Of the three TV movies mentioned above, that of Lindsay Lohan, Christmas falls on time, turns out to be the least damaging and the nicest, let’s put it politely. Its title alone sums up the whole plot. Lindsay Lohan plays the rich heiress of a hotel chain (well, well), a spoiled, rotten, selfish and materialistic influencer to the max. At the top of a luxurious Tremblant-type mountain that belongs to her tycoon dad, Paris Hilton from Utah takes a fall on skis (Christmas really falls!), she hurtles down a slope at high speed, hits her headed for a tree and landed, it just can’t be, on the trail of a charming family hotel of log type and colonial furniture.

But now, our urban aristocrat who dresses like a Christmas ball has lost his memory since his accident and no one is looking for him, oops. Lindsay Lohan, who goes through the film on autopilot, therefore settles in the friendly lodge, which belongs to an attractive widower on the verge of bankruptcy.

Important addition: the owner’s very hot little daughter on the verge of bankruptcy hopes so much that her dad opens his heart to love (insert sad piano here), which he has not done since the tragic death of his wife , we are reminded 52 times. Bring out the mistletoe, the bells and, ta-dam, it’s the magic of Naël, to paraphrase Criquette Rockwell.

A Christmas together (Christmas With You), the second least missed of the three Netflix TV movies, is an urban tale, which begins in the magnificent New York penthouse of a pop star Mexican-American. Our Latina singer spins very poor quality cotton. Like, polyester. Her boyfriend, star of a telenovela, is dumb as a broom. And her record company threatens to dump her if she doesn’t write the next one All I Want For Christmas Is You in three days. Dios mio !

In a reversal as improbable as it is impossible, the pop star bilingual knocks on the door of a 14-year-old fan who lives in the suburbs of New York and whose dad (it’s Freddie Prinze Jr!) teaches music at the local high school. Can you hear the beautiful music these strangers will make together while wearing red and white pajama bottoms?

Even lowering expectations in the second basement of good faith, Noelle’s diary (The Christmas Diary) is painful to watch. Here is Jake Turner (Justin Hartley, who always plays the same role), a famous writer from the big city who chose celibacy, yes, yes, while all his readers have a crush on him. A few days before Christmas, Jake the solitary novelist returns to his hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to empty the house of his mother, who died suddenly. Jake no longer saw his mother, who had become a compulsive hoarder over the years. For 35 years, Jake no longer speaks to his father, who lives recluse in Vermont, where else? And Jake’s older brother died in 1987 in a tree branch and Christmas decoration accident that won’t bring you to tears.

Now enters the scene a young translator who believes that her biological mother was Jake’s nanny in the 1980s. Wow, the reversals! Together, Jake and the young translator will write a new chapter in their respective diaries, not without experiencing the horrors of the worst snowstorm of the century.

They are cold, they are hungry, they are almost naked. But Jake and the young translator are the children of God and they have to love each other with a naive love the fragility of velvet words!