If you’re like most people, you’ve probably spent a lot of time watching escapist entertainment. But “escapist” doesn’t mean “pointless.” Every work of art has something to say, whether it means to or not. If anything, the art we make to calm our anxieties speaks volumes about what makes us anxious in the first place, if only by omission. Even the shallowest superhero movies imagine a world where justice is achievable within a couple short hours, and not just one possible outcome of a miserable bureaucratic obstacle course that’s designed to hurt more people than it protects.
And then there are romantic comedies like “Meet Me Next Christmas,” the latest in a long line of cheerful, often interchangeable holiday rom-coms, which imagine a world where we have the time, money and job security to focus entirely on finding true love in late December, instead of panicking over our end-of-year finances and navigating even more bureaucracies just to renew our health insurance. You can’t help but wonder if it’s a coincidence that Netflix released this movie the day after a divisive national election, where half the country was going to be despondent no matter what happened, or if they knew we were coming and put the kettle on ahead of time.
“Meet Me Next Christmas” stars Christina Milian (“Resort to Love”) as Layla, who helps students attend historically Black colleges and universities as her day job. That’s a really great thing she’s doing. But her defining characteristics aren’t her altruism, they’re her belief in true love and her weirdly passionate love for Pentatonix. Yes, the a cappella band. Yes, it’s very important to the plot.
Layla gets stuck in an airport at Christmas and meets two handsome men. The first, Teddy (Devale Ellis, “Sistas”), introduces her to the concept of sriracha and quickly skedaddles. The second, James (Kofi Siriboe, “Queen Sugar”), spends the evening getting to know her and getting a nice flirt going. When James finds out she has a boyfriend, he shoots his shot: If they’re still single in one year, they should meet at Pentatonix’s annual Christmas concert, and see if this chance encounter really meant something.
One year passes and Layla’s boyfriend cheats on her just before the holidays. So she decides to take James up on his offer and meet him at the show. She’s convinced James could be the love of her life because their “meet cute” was so incredibly contrived it has to mean something. That’s very meta of her. She’s a romantic comedy hero who’s determined to live out a romantic comedy. It’s a shame the movie doesn’t do more with that, but a hint of personality is better than none.
The problem is, the concert is completely sold out. She’s willing to pay top dollar and she can’t even find a helpful scalper. With her options completely exhausted Layla turns to a concierge service, which prides itself on finding anything their clients ask for. Because this universe is canonically contrived, even by the protagonist’s own admission, her concierge turns out to be Teddy. They don’t make that connection at first, so they just go on their merry way, adventuring across New York City in search of Pentatonix tickets. Will she get to the concert in time? Will she realize Teddy is the actual love of her life?
If you want to know the answers to these questions, you’re not alone: so does Pentatonix. In a “Hail Mary” move, Teddy starts messaging the band — which I guess is a thing you can do — and gives them periodic updates on Layla’s adventures throughout the city, in the hope that they’ll cut her a break. So “Meet Me Next Christmas” keeps switching between the actual movie and Pentatonix reading the movie’s Wikipedia page as it gets updated in real time. Even Pentatonix can’t get tickets to a Pentatonix concert, by the way. It’s so crowded there aren’t even any backstage passes available, which is pretty odd since there are a grand total of three people backstage — not counting Pentatonix, who speak in harmony so often they probably count as one person anyway.
Lots of Christmas rom-coms shamelessly crib the plots from other movies and deck them out with seasonal decorations. It’s embarrassing how often it works. I’ve lost track of how many “Groundhog Day, but Christmas” movies I’ve seen over the years. “Meet Me Next Christmas” feints in the direction of “Sleepless in Seattle” before making a hard turn into “Only You” territory. At least that 30-year-old Marisa Tomei/Robert Downey Jr. romance doesn’t get knocked off very often. That almost qualifies as “original” these days.
The plot doesn’t work at all, by the way. The whole premise is that Layla has to get Pentatonix tickets because otherwise she can’t meet James. (He said they shouldn’t reveal their last names so they couldn’t be searched on social media, which in real life that’d be a red flag but here it’s just a whimsical contrivance.) The thing is, Layla doesn’t need tickets to stand outside the entrance and wave at him. She could make a big cardboard sign if she’s worried he wouldn’t see her. Leave a message at the ticket booth. Page him right before the curtain call. There’s literally no reason to go to any trouble whatsoever.
Well, there is one reason: We want her to end up with Teddy instead. We want them to compete in a drag show to try to win those tickets. We want them to brave the shopping lines at high end fashion stores to fetch a rare Christmas gift they can trade to rich weirdos for Layla’s prize. We even want Layla to accidentally mace Teddy in the face just for the sake of comedy, which is rather mean of us if we’re being honest about it.
So all that matters is, do we want these two exceptionally likable and attractive people to hook up with each other? Yes, yes we do. Christina Milian and Devale Ellis are adorable. That’s the whole movie in a nutshell. Nothing else has to work in order to get what we need out of it. Pentatonix can’t even play themselves convincingly, at all, and it still doesn’t hurt this thing. The filmmaker Rusty Cundieff may be famous for daring classics like “Fear of a Black Hat” and “Tales from the Hood,” but he knows how to rom a com and, conversely, how to com a rom.
There’s not much more to “Meet Me Next Christmas,” and that’s actually kind of a lot right now. Films like this can, in healthy doses, help us process our anxieties, and we have a lot of anxieties lately. (If you somehow haven’t seen the headlines today and skipped right to this Netflix romantic comedy review, you may want to brace yourself.) A little of this kind of reassuring fluff goes a long way. And there sure is a little of it.