The festive season is upon us, and that means it’s time to switch on the air con, chuck on a Christmas sweater, and flick on a Christmas movie to get you into the spirit. Instead of waiting around for movies to arrive on free-to-air TV, Netflix has your Christmas marathon covered with a huge line up.
Here’s a list of the top 11 Christmas films to watch on Netflix Australia:
- Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
- The Holidate
- The Princess Switch: Switched Again
- Love Hard
- A Castle for Christmas
- Let It Snow
- The Holiday Calendar
- The Princess Switch
- Christmas Chronicles
- A Christmas Prince
- Christmas Inheritance
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
It’s a tale as old as Christmas itself, with no shortage of Scrooge retellings available to stream. The latest is an animated retelling, with Luke Evans voicing the titular character, as he struggles with the spirit of Christmas while also dealing with the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and those Yet to Come. With songs by award-winning Leslie Bricusse, and a supporting cast including Jonathan Pryce and Olivia Colman, it’ll be a musical Christmas for the whole family.
The Holidate
It’s no secret that Netflix, and its audiences, love cheesy rom coms that are so bad they’re good. Christmas feel-good The Holidate is no different. Emma Roberts stars as Sloane, a twenty-something who is sick of being single on the holidays and being constantly set up by her family. After meeting a strange, attractive Australian (Luke Bracey) in the shopping centre who feels the same way, the two agree to be each other’s ‘holidates’. Aka, platonic plus-ones to every Easter, St Patrick’s Day, and of course, Christmas. But alas, this is Netflix — so of course they’re going to catch feelings along the way.
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The Princess Switch: Switched Again
Vanessa Hudgens is, dare we say it, unstoppable. She has found her niche — Christmas movies where she plays more than one character — and she’s sticking to it. And, we can’t say we hate it. The Princess Switch: Switched Again is the sequel to The Princess Switch, and it follows the two lookalikes from the original movie, Margaret Delacourt the Duchess of Montenaro, and Stacey the baker. Only this time, there’s a third Vanessa Hudgens: Margaret’s wicked cousin Lady Fiona, who is out for the throne. It’s completely ridiculous, but we can’t get enough.
Love Hard
It’s a tale as old as Tinder. A young romance columnist from a big city falls in love with a boy she met on Tinder, only to travel to his small Christmas town to find that she has been catfished. Obviously, she’s devastated, but her luck begins to pick up when she realises that the face she fell for is walking around the very same town! Convinced she can bag herself the original hottie, she teams up with her catfisher to lure him in, creating an entirely fake personality in the process. It turns out this might not be the best way to start a relationship, and that the right person for her was in front of her the entire time. The true Tinder date was the Christmas friends she made along the way?
A Castle for Christmas
Every Christmas the festive gods bring us a flick so dripping with cheese that we have no option but to eat it up. This time, it’s A Castle for Christmas, a rose-tinted rom com, about a famed writer whose career is having a bit of a stumble. In order to rediscover her passion and become relevant once again, she decides to travel back to Scotland, to a castle where her grandfather grew up. There she meets the once-duke-now-groundsman Duke Myles, who is determined to take her money and chuck her out of the crumbling mansion. But slowly and surely, love blooms on the Scottish winds and the writer and the groundsman start to fall for the castle magic.
Let It Snow
Let It Snow starts off like most Christmas movies, set in a small town, on Christmas Eve, in America. What sets this flick apart is that it focuses on multiple, overlapping storylines that become connected by local diner, Waffle Town. We start the scene with plain-jane Julie bumping into pop star Stuart Bale on the train. Stuart seems to take a liking to her sassy attitude and, after much resistance on Julie’s part, decides to follow her around for the day. A heartbreaking truth about Julie’s mother is revealed, which opens Julie up to vulnerability, igniting the chemistry between her and Stuart.
Across town, best friends Dorrie and Addie are doing their best to navigate the harsh world of romantic rejection. Addie is worried her boyfriend is breaking up with her, so after an intervention staged by her bestie, she ends up making an unusual alliance and re-discovering her confidence. Dorrie, on the other hand, finds herself in a tricky situation with a cheerleader that hasn’t come out as gay to her friends and family. After serving her and her friends at the Waffle Town diner, the cheerleader pretends she doesn’t know Dorrie as to avoid dealing with her confusion over her sexuality. The last major storyline is one involving two friends since childhood, Duke and Tobin, where through conversations with a friend, we discover that Tobin has feelings for her. One very adventure-packed day later (where there may or may not be a car chase scene), the two find themselves on the roof of the Waffle Town, where a party is going on. What happens next, you’ll have to find out for yourself.
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Back to Netflix Christmas Movies
The Holiday Calendar
If you haven’t got yourself an advent calendar yet, wait until you watch this movie – it might have you wanting one that’s not just filled with chocolate. The Holiday Calendar is a story of a photographer Abby played by Kat Graham from The Vampire Diaries, who is stuck in a dead-end job taking Santa photos, too afraid to take a chance to showcase her own photography. Things in her life start to change pretty quickly as her grandfather gifts her an antique advent calendar that may be predicting her future.
Two love interests come into the scene – her childhood best friend and a very handsome doctor. It’s a little cheesy but a lot of fun trying to figure out what the calendar will predict next, and if she will ever get her break as a “real” photographer.
The Princess Switch
From our royal family obsession in recent years, it seems like Netflix is going with this theme for its Christmas films. Vanessa Hudgens plays two different characters in the Princess Switch – one being Stacy, a baker from Chicago and the second Margaret, the Duchess of Montenaro who has a British accent that might have you cringing throughout the movie. Once you get past the shonky accent, you might enjoy this chick flick especially if you’re a fan of High School Musical.
If the title doesn’t already give it away, the two switch places in order for the Duchess to get to know the people of her town. It’s basically The Princess Diaries meets The Parent Trap. When it’s time for the two to go back to their own realities, it seems that both have fallen for each other’s beaus. It’s a film so bad that it’s good and will get you into the Christmas spirit with its very festive scenes.
Christmas Chronicles
The Christmas Chronicles has a bit of a twist of how most movies portray Santa. This one hates when people assume he’s fat, gets annoyed when asked to go “Ho, Ho, Ho” and even has a laugh with a touch of menace to it. Nevertheless, he’s all about saving Christmas when siblings Kate and Teddy Pierce try to catch in him in action on Christmas Eve but instead make him lose his magical hat, reindeer and sack of presents.
The brother and sister work together as a team for the first time since their firefighter dad passes away, which takes a toll on the whole family at the start of the film. This adventure seems to be exactly what the two needed, it even features elves that seem to be a lot like the minions from Despicable Me who speak gibberish. With most other Netflix Christmas films leaning towards the rom-com genre, this is a great one for the whole family and if you’re a fan of The Santa Clause films, you’re likely to enjoy this one too.
A Christmas Prince
Continuing with the fairy tale Christmas theme that Netflix has going on, this film follows a lowly junior editor, Amber, who is sent abroad to get the scoop on a prince set to become king. He’s portrayed as a wild, party boy who’s reluctant to take up his royal duties, but it turns out to be only what the media wants to depict him as – go figure.
As Amber snoops around the castle she gets caught by the royal family’s gatekeeper who assumes she is the new tutor for the young princess Emily, whose disability makes her closed off to everyone, except her older brother. Amber plays along in her new role with the intention to get her story but instead falls in love with the prince. As with any movie, the truth is bound to come out, but will the prince forgive her for lying about her identity? It’s slightly predictable, and even its sequel ‘A Christmas Prince – the Royal Wedding’ might give away how this one ends, but it does throw in a few plot twists you may not expect.
Christmas Inheritance
It seems that Netflix is loaded with terrible Christmas romances, yet we still end up watching them like the trash TV enthusiasts that we are. Christmas Inheritance is a story of a spoilt city gal who is about to inherit the family company, but her dad is concerned she’s not responsible enough for the job. So, to help her learn more about the spirit of the firm, he sends her to deliver a handwritten Christmas card to his former business partner in his hometown, Snow Falls – a tradition kept from when the company first started.
Predictably, there’s a lot to learn as she goes incognito in the small town with only a bit of cash in her pocket. Her trip surprisingly also gets extended by a snowstorm, forcing her to work to keep her hotel room. As her fiancé, who’s just as spoilt, awaits her return, there’s a romance that starts to build during her time at Snow Falls, with the sweet and humble manager of the inn she’s staying at. Gasp! This film aims to be inspiring and festive, but you might like to leave this one for when you run out of Christmas movies to watch.
There are many more festive movies on Netflix, so if none of these take your fancy, keep searching away as there’s bound to be one that you’d like to settle down with on Christmas Eve.
Photo Credit: Netflix
Original Author: Maddy Morwood
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