Willowy romantic comedies are a dime-a-dozen at Christmastime, but the only complaints are coming from people who don’t like Christmas rom-coms in the first place. This genre’s fans aren’t looking to have our perceptions challenged. It’s too damn cold for that. We just want snuggles.
Mark Steven Johnson’s “Champagne Problems” is aptly titled, since everything is fizzy and, since everybody’s rich, none of the characters have any real difficulties to speak of. Sigh … wouldn’t that be nice?
In Johnson’s film (which just happens to share a title with a Taylor Swift song), a centuries-old Champagne vineyard goes up for sale, so every corporation descends on the lavish estate like it’s a bubbly, alcoholic gold rush. Minka Kelly stars as Sydney, a busy businesswoman who only knows business, who represents a big corporation, but promises her sister she’ll take one night off in Paris to have an adventure. Sydney goes to the world’s twee-est bookstore and meets Henri (Tom Woznicka, “Slow Horses”). They swiftly fall in like with each other, and spend one glorious night celebrating Christmas in the City of Lights. ’Tis the damn season, after all.
But — whomp, whomp — Henri turns out to be the son of the vineyard’s owner, Hugo (Thibault de Montalembert, “All Quiet on the Western Front”), and Hugo turns out to be a quirky guy. He insists that Sydney and the other would-be buyers spend the holidays at his fabulous estate and prove that they understand champagne and French culture. Whoever impresses Hugo the most, wins the vineyard.
And so “Champagne Problems” sneakily transforms into yet another Christmas rom-com about an American staying in a fancy European manor house, trotting around in horse-drawn carriages, and falling in love with the heir to a fortune. Normally the heir is a prince, not a rich guy who dreams of owning a bookstore (which he could afford to do at any time but somehow hasn’t), but whatever. We can tolerate it.
Nothing bad happens to no body. No crime is committed, unless you count Sydney’s French competition insisting she eat giant wheels of cheese even though she’s lactose intolerant. So yes, you will hear leading lady Kelly fart. And no, apparently she’s never heard about lactase supplements that help lactose intolerant people digest cheese. Poor girl. She has no idea that happiness is a warm Gruyère.
Dorothea Lasky once wrote that “the only thing that matters in love is passion,” but there’s nothing passionate about movies like “Champagne Problems.” This is the kind of romantic comedy where you’re genuinely surprised to find out two characters slept together, at all, ever. The film is more concerned with comfy vibes and tree-trimming competitions and cute little dogs who take a shine to the woman you’re supposed to marry, because dogs will always tell it like it is. “Champagne Problems” takes one of the most historically passionate places on Earth and focuses on fried food and ferris wheels. We could have done this whole thing on Coney Island and saved money on a plane ticket.
But the escapist fantasy of spending the holidays in an ivy-covered chateau holds a weird appeal to an American cowboy like me. (Specifically, the kind of cowboy who lives in the city and never met a cow in his life.) In an era when 99% of the country is financially struggling, movies like “Champagne Problems” give us a brief hit of cozy, bourgeois affluence, as a treat. I’d opine about whether these rom-coms are the ultimate guilty pleasure, since they’re fantasies about living just like the people who actively destroy our lives, but long story short … yeah, they are. They turn us all into Marjorie “Marge” Simpson, fantasizing about the things we’d like to purchase. Oh yeah, baby, I don’t own that classic yellow Citroen. But it’d be cooler if I did.
The romantic part of Johnson’s rom-com barely reaches a low simmer, but the comedy part burns a little brighter. Sean Amsing plays the gay investor, and boy does he play it up, but he’s never anything less than lovable no matter how big a cliché he is. And he’ll never be as big a cliché as Otto (Flula Borg), the German investor who decorates trees with a single ornament as an ode to malaise, and claims that, like most Germans, he believed in Krampus until he was in his mid-20s. He does have one clever speech where he explains that in Germany “Die Hard” is a tragedy about a guns-a-blazing American who kills the heroic Hans Gruber, who was only trying to steal from a giant corporation. But he also makes an animated business presentation to Hugo that looks a lot like it was generated by A.I. The credits don’t make it clear, which is unfortunate, because I don’t know for certain if “Champagne Problems” is part of the problem, and I’d like closure.
Writer-director Johnson has an interesting career. He wrote the classic comedy “Grumpy Old Men” and co-wrote the somehow-kind-of-a-classic-even-though-it’s-bad Christmas fantasy “Jack Frost,” before taking a break to direct “Daredevil” and “Ghost Rider.” He returns, evermore, back to tales of romance and whimsy, so maybe this is where his heart really is at. “Champagne Problems” has a decent heart (except maybe for the part that looks like A.I., which would be fundamentally heartless).
Oh Netflix, you took me on a short, superficial journey and dropped me off right where you left me, in the real world, my time innocuously wasted. I wish I could stay in your fantasy world where everything was easy and nothing mattered except Christmas and booze. But the world is tapping me impatiently on the shoulder, telling me it’s time to go.
