Jingle Bell Heist review – a Netflix comedy cut a little short of the standard festive filler | Comedy movies

WIt’s been a few weeks since Netflix’s annual Christmas dump and standards have already dipped below freezing. In both Alicia Silverstone’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas and Minka Kelly’s Champagne Troubles, the movements were lethargic and cheap, executed without adding any seasonal sparkle, and the bar was set low again for the next month and change.

So, while there’s nothing special about the streamer’s latest celebratory effort, the crime thriller turned romantic comedy Jingle Bell Heist, there is enough to give it an edge over its poorer peers. Instead of being set in Snowflakeville or some other silly-named small town in Central America (while clearly being filmed in Canada), it was shot on location in London during Christmas 2023 (directed by Michael Fimognari, Mike Flanagan’s cinematographer). The city does a fair amount of heavy lifting with every pub, café and main street helping to conjure a real sense of place usually absent in such an area (it also means no need to be distracted by increasingly fake CG snow). There are roles by British comedy stars like Peter Serafinowicz and Amandaland’s wonderful Lucy Punch, and the soundtrack opts for alternative holiday songs from Low and Run-DMC over another affordable cover of “All I Want for Christmas is You.” There’s also a plot that’s not quite as routine as we’re used to with no career-minded woman waiting to be tamed by a hunk who craves family. These may not seem like major applause-worthy diversions, but in the hopelessly generic, and sometimes inexcusably lazy, world of Netflix, that’s not a thing.

Instead of city meets small town, our lovebirds are, wait for it, They both live in London They both struggle in similar ways. American Sophie (Disney Channel alumna Olivia Holt) cares for her ailing mother while toiling at two jobs, one of which is in a department store gearing up for the holidays (or rather, a random building that has been unconvincingly converted into one). Nick (Sex Education’s Connor Swindells) is an ex-con father trying to support his ex-partner and his daughter, squandering his technical knowledge in a mobile phone store. They both share a certain talent for theft, which causes their paths to collide and a plan is formulated, combining their skills to rob Maxwell Sterling (Serafinovich), the obnoxious millionaire behind the department store. Christmas Eve of course.

Although we’re not in full-blown eat-the-rich territory (this isn’t Home Alone meets Parasite), inflaming a Christmas movie with class pain at this particular moment is an effective idea. Sophie’s decision to move her British-born mother back to her home country is based on the unaffordability of healthcare in the US, but even the NHS has its limits with more experimental options only available privately. Nick’s bitter history with Maxwell dates back to an insurance scam that was his downfall, bonding the two over a shared sense of despair at an unfair system and the desire to get what they feel is rightfully theirs.

The details of the heist, as conceived by novelist and Bridgerton writer Abby MacDonald, aren’t quite as clever as they could be (as Sub-Ocean’s Eleven’s score suggests) but they find some surprising twists in the final act that help raise the stakes and elevate our investment from light to moderate. Holt and Swindells are a solid duo with little chemistry, but their dialogue ends up being a bit beige, a bit rough, and MacDonald struggles to deliver the laughs we’re still waiting for (the script was blacklisted for 2022 but would have benefited from a knockout then). There’s one scene involving dual earphone banter, which is a sharp idea and one wonders what could have been added with someone else in the mix because right now it’s not exactly funny (Punch is the most reliable source of comedy, and does its best to elevate what you’ve given it, if only it could get more). It’s the problem we have when one of these movies is raised above the standard, and you end up wishing it was so much better. As it stands, Jingle Bell Heist is as good as it gets at the moment.