There’s a question critics get asked a lot, and it always goes like this: “How could you like [insert Movie A] but not [insert Movie B]?” But that only makes sense if there’s a reason to compare those two movies. Lots of films are doing very different things. “Wicked: For Good” may have more money and ambition than, say, the Netflix rom-com “A Merry Little Ex-Mas,” but “A Merry Little Ex-Mas” had the modest goal of being comforting and Christmasy and it achieved that, whereas “Wicked: For Good” tried to tell an epic, tragic tale about fascism with a lot of musical numbers, and it didn’t do it very well.
To put it another, much glibber way: There’s “good,” and then there’s “Netflix holiday rom-com good.” We have to assess these movies based on their modest goals, because they’re not trying to work the same way theatrical features work, with their excellent characters and clever stories and topflight cinematography. So it’s super weird that “Jingle Bell Heist,” the new Netflix holiday rom-com from director Michael Fimognari, has excellent characters and a clever story and topflight cinematography. It’s not just “Netflix holiday rom-com good.” It’s actually very, very good.
Olivia Holt (“This Is Not a Test”) stars as Sophia, a petty thief who also works at a British department store, which is owned by a total a-hole named Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz). Sophia’s a crook, but she’s a kind-hearted crook — the type who picks a bully’s pocket and donates the cash to his victim.
She’s caught lifting some money from the lost-and-found, but not by security. She’s caught by Nick (Connor Swindells, “William Tell”), who plans to rob the store for real, and who lightly blackmails her into becoming his accomplice. Like, it’s blackmail, but it’s not so blackmail that they can’t fall in love.
They have sympathetic reasons for living lives of crime. Sophia’s mother is dying, and even though they moved to England for free health care, mom needs special treatment, and she needs it fast, so it’ll have to come out of pocket. (One suspects early drafts of “Jingle Bell Heist” took place in America, where suffering and dying because you can’t afford to live is an everyday occurrence, not a depressing novelty.)
Meanwhile, Nick went to prison for five years because of Sterling, which is why his wife divorced him. If he can’t come up with a lot of money for child support soon, she’s going to move away with their daughter. Now that’s sympathetic! Now we want them to commit fa-la-la-la-larceny.
Then again, of course we want that. We always want rich people in movies to get robbed by the poor people they exploit. Peter Serafinowicz was hired to play a wealthy jerk whose uppance the audience wants desperately to come, and he knows just how to be playfully hateable. Meanwhile, Holt and Swindells were hired to add some zip to a well-structured screenplay, so the film plays like more than a highly organized series of plot points, which it might have with a lesser cast.
Abby McDonald’s excellent script goes through all the proper heist movie rhythms and all the proper holiday rom-com rhythms, interweaving them smartly. “Jingle Bell Heist” would make a great double-feature with this year’s “Heart Eyes,” which also combined the rom-com and slasher genres to note-perfect effect, and also starred Holt, which may or may not be a coincidence. Maybe Holt just has great taste in genre mash-ups. If so, kudos to her, let’s keep the streak going. Hey Olivia! How about a cozy holiday rom-com that’s also a Scorsese-esque gangster picture? Any chance your agent’s got one of those in the screenplay pile?
“Jingle Bell Heist” comes courtesy of director Michael Fimognari, who directed the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” sequels, and was also the cinematographer on fantastic-looking movies and TV shows like “Doctor Sleep” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” He pulls double duty on this, not just directing a crackerjack heist romance but photographing it too. It’s a damn good looking movie, with slick camera moves and an intriguingly warm “Eyes Wide Shut” palette, which makes it easier to take this story seriously. Not that “Jingle Bell Heist” isn’t a lark, of course. It’s just an unusually classy lark.
If all holiday rom-coms were as good as “Jingle Bell Heist,” they’d still be comfy and cozy, but they wouldn’t have as much of a stigma. The people who love these straight-to-TV/streaming flicks just as they are, low-fidelity and all, will be able to appreciate “Jingle Bell Heist” as one of the subgenre’s best. And as a bonus, they can also show “Jingle Bell Heist” to people who look down on these films and, afterwards, they can act a little smug.
