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

It is the season to lounge on the couch and consume a packet of holiday pastries in front of a great film, a awful feature, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

This year, a crop of latest holiday movies strives to join part of our holiday traditions—potentially even joining the ranks alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

Thus, in a vital public service to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the festive feeling, I marathoned as many recent festive movies as possible in a single day.

7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Kicking off, hopefully, on a positive note. This film is the exclusive 2025 movie on a well-known aggregator's list of the best 100 festive features of all time.

The Jonas Brothers end up trapped in the UK after finishing their world tour and must return for Christmas. Their attempts are hindered by an evil Santa, who sings to declare they won’t get home until they “rediscover their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the squabbling siblings is amusing even for the non-fan, while devotees will undoubtedly pick up on lots of in-jokes as they attempt to get back using all transportation available.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who will have to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland stars as a movie actor roped into a "panto".

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and older star Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose agent has tricked him into thinking he’s appearing in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin cast-mates inform him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he protests. One can imagine their response. That is, unless you’re not acquainted with traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some great jokes, some heartwarming sub-plots, and the supporting actors is excellent, too.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

An actor pops up at the outset of this film, too, calling someone a mug for the second consecutive movie. Could this be a fresh holiday staple?

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

Mr Sood is played by an actor from Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story progresses as the miserly Mr Sood is haunted by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This cultural adaptation is at least unique from all the others, but unfortunately he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s portrayal is flat—a problem when he’s so central to everything.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

12.04pm - Stuffed

Before lunch for a channel's Christmas comedy-drama—which stars Guz Khan as a endearingly grumpy man who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an sizable holiday payout at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) persuades him spending the sum on a holiday to Lapland.

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

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the tree, fairy lights and snow are in the background—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its core purpose—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

Driven corporate star Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is assigned to a French chateau to do a deal for a sparkling wine company. During her travels, she meets a fellow in a bookshop who vows to show her the holidays in the City of Light.

A commentator recently declared this is the top new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a exaggeration, but it is a festive dalliance with a dash of elegance and gives the required warm and fuzzy feels.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

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

The truth is out there, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the assistance of a panel of well-known experts and celebrities.

It’s gentle but charming, and perfect viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the matriarch of a bickering 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 begins by referencing classic festive films like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before declaring: “They need to make a movie about the unsung heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s what this is, but in execution it’s really a mash-up of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character eventually finds her strength.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Formulaic Fun

The day’s waned in quality, but happily here’s a new addition in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—holiday fare.

It’s a tale as well-worn: An American woman journeys to a far-off wintery locale and ends up discovering romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher