Devouring 2025's Festive Features: The Good, The Bad and The So-Bad-It's-Good.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and demolish a tin of mince pies in front of a terrific flick, a poor film, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

Once again, a batch of latest seasonal stories strives to join part of our seasonal watchlist—perhaps even joining the ranks alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

Thus, in a vital public service to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to find the holiday mood, I binged as many fresh festive movies as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Starting, optimistically, on a high. This release is the sole 2025 entry on a well-known aggregator's list of the top 100 festive features of all time.

The popular band end up stranded in the UK after wrapping up their international trek and must make it back for Christmas. Their efforts are hindered by an evil Santa, who sings to declare they won’t get home until they “rediscover their brotherly magic.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is entertaining even for the casual viewer, while followers will undoubtedly catch lots of easter eggs as they attempt to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a travelogue of mishaps.

It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is great for fans and a positive start to the day.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their loved ones who are obliged to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Hollywood star Kiefer Sutherland appears as a Hollywood star cast a pantomime.

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “temperamental” and older action hero Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose manager has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin cast-mates tell him he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he insists angrily. One can imagine their reply. Except if you’re not acquainted with traditional British theatre traditions.

There are some great jokes, some heartwarming sub-plots, and the rest of the cast is cracking, too.

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit naff at a different time, but is a great entertainment at Christmas.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

An actor pops up at the beginning of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the next movie straight. Could this be a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a musical taxi operator who picks up Mr Sood, the latest spin 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 well-known tale develops as the miserly Mr Sood is haunted by the apparitions of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least different from all the others, but sadly he’s not very compelling and Nayyar’s performance is wooden—a major flaw when he’s so the main character.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

Before lunch for a network's holiday special—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “avoids Christmas.”

But after he gets an sizable holiday payout at work, his wife (starring Morgana Robinson) convinces him splurging the cash on a holiday to Lapland.

There’s just one issue—he discovers there was an error with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to devise a plan for how to pay back the excess.

Enjoyable but forgettable.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the setting—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its raison d’etre—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is assigned to a vineyard to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. En route, she runs into a man in a book store who vows to show her Christmas in Paris.

A commentator recently stated this is the top new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a festive dalliance with a hint of sophistication and gives the necessary warm and fuzzy feels.

The scene with a extended debate about Die Hard is very good too.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

A Charming Quest

Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, refuses to stop believing in Father Christmas, despite the persuasion of his dad (starring James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

The truth is out there, and Chris ventures forth to find it with the assistance of a team of well-known experts and celebrities.

It’s understated but sweet, and ideal viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother of a quarrelling American family who come back together for the holidays—including other acclaimed actress Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping Christmas classics 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 at last comes into her own.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s gone downhill, but fortunately here’s a new offering in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—festive fodder.

It’s a tale as old as time: An American woman goes on a quest to a distant snowy land and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher