Devouring 2025's Holiday Movies: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

‘Tis the season to relax on the couch and demolish a packet of festive treats in front of a great film, a bad movie, or one that’s awesomely awful.

Once again, a crop of fresh seasonal stories hopes to be part of our seasonal watchlist—potentially even finding a spot alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

Thus, in a noble effort to separate the winners from the losers, and to embrace the holiday mood, I binged as many fresh holiday releases as possible in a single day.

7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Beginning, optimistically, on a high. This release is the exclusive 2025 movie on a well-known aggregator's list of the greatest 100 festive features of all time.

The Jonas Brothers find themselves stuck in the UK after wrapping up their international trek and must get home for Christmas. Their attempts are hampered by an malevolent Father Christmas, who bursts into melody to state they won’t get home until they “rekindle their sibling bond.”

The banter between the arguing trio is enjoyable even for the casual viewer, while fans will undoubtedly catch lots of easter eggs as they endeavor to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

It’s not legendary, but is great for devotees and a positive start to the day.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who will have to sit through it.

Late Morning: Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland stars as a movie actor tricked into a pantomime.

“A what's a panto??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and aging action hero Brad Mack, who has hit a rough patch and whose representative has tricked him into thinking he’s performing in high-class London stage.

His pantomime cast-mates inform him he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he insists angrily. One can imagine their retort. Unless you’re ignorant of traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some great jokes, some cockle-warming sub-plots, and the ensemble is brilliant, too.

It’s the type of film that would be a bit tacky at any other time of year, but is a lot of fun at Christmas.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Morning: Christmas Karma

An actor appears at the beginning of this film, too, calling someone a mug for the second film in a row. Is this a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a musical taxi operator who encounters Mr Sood, the modern take on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the director of Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story develops as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is haunted by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least unique from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s portrayal is wooden—a problem when he’s so the main character.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

12.04pm - Stuffed

There’s time for a channel's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “avoids Christmas.”

But after he gets an large festive windfall at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) talks him into spending the sum on a holiday to Lapland.

There’s just one snag—he finds out there was an mistake with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to determine how to pay back the remainder.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

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

Ambitious executive Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is sent to a French chateau to negotiate a purchase for a champagne business. En route, she encounters a fellow in a book store who offers to show her the holidays in the City of Light.

An expert recently stated this is the top new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a holiday love story with a touch of class and gives the required heartwarming sensation.

The scene with a detailed conversation about Die Hard is particularly strong too.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

Teenage Chris, played by Lenny Rush, refuses to stop believing in Father Christmas, regardless of the attempts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

The truth is out there, and Chris sets out to find it with the assistance of a panel of well-known scientists and personalities.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the matriarch of a dysfunctional American family who reunite for the holidays—including other acclaimed actress 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 real champions of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s the concept, but in reality it’s really a mash-up of those aforementioned movies, at least until Pfeiffer’s character finally comes into her own.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Evening: A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s waned in quality, but thankfully here’s a new offering in the crowded field of predictable, sentimental, cheesy—and utterly watchable—holiday fare.

It’s a story as familiar as can be: 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