Way back in 1993 Haddaway asked us “What Is Love” and every December Michelle and I sit through a bunch of films trying to see if his answer, “baby don’t hurt me” is correct. Technically this month is my romantic comedy counter to Michelle’s fear filled October, but every year a few other genres sneak into our lineup (usually pure romances and Christmas films).
I am a huge fan of the romantic comedy genre and believe that the standard format is often the best but doesn’t need to be adhered to religiously (that being meet-cute, setup, falling in love, conflict, crisis, grand gesture, happy ending). I believe the pinnacle of the genre may be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but don’t put The Princess Switch that far down the slope.
These won’t be comprehensive reviews but I’ll define the genre, give a one sentence summary, a quick opinion, and finally my recommendation about when you might want to watch any of these selections.
SHOWS:
Home for Christmas – Season 3. Romantic Comedy. For the third year the perpetually disastrous but immensely caring Johanne tries to find love. This Norwegian series strikes an excellent balance of romance and comedy even if Johanne herself causes me to cringe as she keeps making bad decisions. I’d save this series for December as the holiday theme is strong but otherwise recommend it without reservation.
FILMS:
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Romance. Two singles meet at a wedding and go on a magical adventure which sends them back to important life moments which they have to awkwardly relive together. This film should have been a home run for me and did incite me to contemplation about romance films in general as I worked to deduce why I didn’t adore it. Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell both put in good performances and the cinematic crafting is exceptional. The story falls flat for me in that the two don’t actually learn much about each other, they just see vignettes of dramatic life moments and we are supposed to believe that is the spark that leads to a deep love.
I am a person who is quick to share life stories if I’m talking to you. A bit of an open book. Knowing a person’s biography, or sharing yours, isn’t a springboard to love or even friendship. A believable relationship (even a friendship) forms as you begin to understand the reasons a person has made the decisions they did throughout their life and what they have learned from those experiences. This movie tries to sell two people each learning that they had sad things happen during their respective childhoods as an interesting seed for a love story. Overcoming conflict and crisis are essential steps in a romantic comedy for a reason – they add plausibility to the romance. Watch it if you are a huge fan of one of the actors but otherwise I’d pass altogether.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas. Christmas Rom-Com. A separated couple on the cusp of divorce are trying to keep the family holiday traditions alive for one final Christmas before fully moving on with their lives.
Last year I played a game called Shit Happens where you need to fit different bad things into a logical order based on where they fall in a misery index set up by psychologists and other people whose job it is to know how miserable things are. The game is marketed specifically for adults and I failed miserably when I hit the card “Your Parents Separate” which (as an adult) I would put as worse then losing your wallet but not as bad as developing agoraphobia which prevents you from leaving your house. The professionals put parental separation as much worse than either, worse than your spouse becoming an alcoholic and almost tied with getting frostbite and losing seven toes. Needless to say I had a hard time grasping the main characters’ situation where they insisted on trying to maintain a charade for their adult and near adult children for over a year which seems absurdly emotionally painful for the separated couple.
Silly plot or not this ended up being a well executed rom-com with multiple laugh out loud moments, including most every scene starring Pierson Fode (more of him to come!). An excellent December movie as long as you aren’t dealing with the trauma of having separated parents.
We Live in Time. Sad Romance. A few minutes into this movie M pointed out that it clearly was going to break our no Fault In Our Stars rule. That rule is that we generally avoid the overplayed plot of love where one of the involved parties has an incurable fatal disease and is obviously going to die at the end of the film. I hadn’t read the plot when I picked the move but couldn’t disagree. The movie is a series of vignettes showing two younger people’s love story over a long period of time, and also cancer.
Excellent acting didn’t save this story for me. I sincerely dislike the too common theme of people entering a relationship thinking that love alone will overcome their irreconcilable differences – in this case whether or not they should have children. Compromise is an essential part of any relationship but there is a point where making such significant changes will inevitably change the people involved to the point that the fabric of their love will inevitably fail.
Should you watch this one? Follow your personal Fault In Our Stars rule, don’t bend like we did.
Irish Wish. Rom-com. Lindsay Lohan loves her boss but he loves her friend and she finds herself in Ireland about to be a bridesmaid at a wedding that she definitely doesn’t want to happen. Of course, Ireland is host to naughty sprites and an Incarnation of Saint Brigid (played hilariously by Dawn Bradfield) hears Lindsay’s wish and everything starts to go haywire. This movie follows the rules of rom-coms perfectly and was one of my favorites this year, absolutely worth the watch if you share my appreciation of the genre.
Christmas with You. Rom-com. I’ve dodged this one for a couple years even though on the surface it seemed like it would be right up my alley. A struggling pop star on an impromptu fan visit musically connects with the fan’s father. Will their connection move from piano to love? I kick myself for putting this one off, this was another by-the-book rom-com that hits all the right notes. Same recommendation as the last one – a definite watch for my fellow rom-commers.
Step Up, Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3D, Step Up Revolution, Step Up: All In. Dance battles with less romance than their posters imply. Some movie series are so repetitive that we simply can’t remember which we’ve seen. Resident Evil is maybe the poster child for this problem. It’s not that the movies are bad, just that their plots are disconnected enough so it doesn’t really matter what order you view them in. The Step Up series is a different beast altogether in that we thought we had seen most of the films, but as we started to watch some recaps on YouTube we realized we had never actually seen any of them. We did brainstorm a few options that we had likely confused it for, settling on Bring It On with its seven films as the most likely culprit.
The world of Step Up is one in which most every medium large city has an aggrieved underground dance battle network operating illegally. This group usually has a clash with a conveniently located school of dance and the students who attend. The two groups work through their differences just in time to compete in some type of grand dance battle at the end of the movie. There are numerous other themes that run through many of the films including the plight of orphans, street dance not getting the respect it deserves, social persecution based on where the dancers live, and forbidden love (“the wrong side of the tracks” would find its way onto the back of the VHS box in the description of most all of the movies).
I was going to rate all the films based on dance scenes, love stories, and a host of other factors but they were struck by the Resident Evil curse days after we finished the last one. If you want to see some pretty good dancing and laugh at the plots just watch them in order, there are always cameos of characters from previous films and in general the quality falls off over time. If you are primarily here for romance just keep moving along, love is never the primary or even secondary storyline.
Hannah Waddingham: Home For Christmas. Live Christmas variety show. We love Ted Lasso and grew to appreciate Hannah Waddingham while watching that most excellent show. She brings other Lasso cast members and friends to the stage for this singing and dancing spectacular.
Definitely, Maybe Rom-com. Ryan Reynolds plays a man in the throes of a divorce whose 10 year old daughter insists he tell the story about how he fell in love with her mother (his soon to be ex wife). Told in a very Neverending Story style (if you know, you know) this is a movie I should have watched right when it came out based on my passion for the genre. An absolute joy of a movie which doesn’t follow the standard format and keeps you guessing about who the main character married and maybe even who he really loved. If you haven’t watched it get to it, and if you have, chide me for having missed it in the comments!
The Wrong Paris Silly rom-com. Pierson Fode is back, along with Miranda Cosgrove. Dawn (Miranda) NEEDS to get to Paris, France but is stuck in Texas. Her sister gets her to sign up for a reality show filming in Paris in an attempt to save flight expenses. Oops, the show is pulling a fast one on the contestants and is really being filmed in Paris, Texas. Pierson Fode plays a bachelor a-la The Bachelor and hijinx ensue. This was much sillier than Definitely, Maybe but was our second double delight, I absolutely recommend it, even if you hate reality television.
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. Dance and romance during the fall of Cuba. That was actually the genre and description of the film all in one. Patrick Swayze shows up. Michelle gives it the glowing review “It could have been worse”. If you want to see dancing head towards Step Up instead. If you really loved Dirty Dancing and want to hear how the music from that movie would sound with a Cuban flair watch this movie.
Life as We Know It. Rom-com. When a couple dies in an accident they appoint their two best friends as guardians of their baby. The friends don’t really like each other and are now living together AND are brand new parents. This nightmare scenario turns out exactly as you expect and delivers some big laughs along the way. The conflict and crisis feel almost too realistic for the genre but it all works in the end. Thumbs up and recommended, even if you aren’t into babies.
No Pressure (Polish). Rom-com. A Polish grandma tricks her granddaughter into taking charge of her farm. Very goofy but this sticks to the genre blueprint and delivered a satisfying story. As long as you don’t mind extreme silliness I would put this one onto your love list.
While We’re Young. Dramedy. I enjoy Noah Baumbach’s films and need to catch up on a few of them. Although this is decidedly not a rom-com, it was one of my favorite films of the season. As board game enthusiasts we find ourselves spending lots of time with people from younger generations. This film captures a decidedly unsettling glimpse of cross generation friendship while also exploring what it feels like to grow older as all your friends start having children. Insightful and interesting, this film had Michelle and I talking to each other about life more than any other this season (which we both enjoy). I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, especially those of you older than 45 or so.
Jingle Bell Heist. Christmas rom-com. Two petty thieves reluctantly join forces to pull off a complex robbery. Will their personal histories and potential feelings for each other get in the way of their grand scheme? This was my biggest let down of the season and I can’t really recommend it. The plot is both obvious and overly contrived, the characters all fall flat, the romance is tepid, the heist itself has barely any tension.
Christmas Casanova. Rom-com. Podcaster and vibes are the two words that I’ve heard or said sarcastically more than any others in 2025. In this by the book (that’s a good thing in my perspective) rom-com, a podcaster tries to boost her popularity by trying to help a man (who calls in to a different podcast) convince his best friend to leave her boyfriend and enter a romantic relationship with him. No spoilers but you aren’t truly a fan of this genre if you don’t already know what happens. As long as you can put up with another podcaster I’d recommend watching this next December, but it’s a relatively unmemorable film overall.
Joker: Folie à Deux. WTF. I went into this with low expectations and came away irritated nonetheless. I have nothing to nice to say so I won’t say anything at all.
That Christmas. Animated family Christmas. A cute family movie about a tiny town having a disastrous holiday. This won’t go down as a classic and doesn’t have much of that snarky adult humor hidden under the surface that make the best of this type of movie more palatable. If you have kids in the house and don’t want to watch one of the standbys that have been on repeat this one could break up that repetition.
Oh. What. Fun. Christmas frustrated overworked mother. Michelle Pfeiffer is one of those moms who goes all out for Christmas. Her children are all grown up and don’t really appreciate the work she puts into the holiday. The family ends up accidentally leaving her behind as they leave for an event and Michelle decides to get in the car and leave. My favorite Christmas movie of the year and only let down a bit by an ending that overplays the mother’s plight storyline. On one hand I understand the main character puts in a bunch of work and wants to be appreciated – but there is a flip side where her children are all adults and have their own lives which aren’t hers to dictate (even if she is essentially demanding they have fun at her traditional Christmas). Definitely worth a watch, lots of laughs, but save A Christmas Story for afterwards because this will feel droll after that rewatch.
Meet Me Next Christmas. Rom-com. While stuck in an airport on Christmas eve Layla meets two interesting men. She is in a relationship but agrees to meet one of the two at a specific concert next Christmas Eve if they are both single. She is unexpectedly single just before the concert and cannot get a ticket to the show so hires a concierge who happens to be the other interesting man she met a year before.
I need to reiterate that I personally enjoy that comfy slipper feeling of a rom-com that sticks to the tried and true formula with a plot that is familiar but slightly reimagined. Yes, all these movies have essentially the same storyline, that is why they are great. This was slightly better than Christmas Casanova and should also be on your December watchlist.
Champagne Problems. Rom-com. I’m cutting to chase here and skipping plot because this is another by the book rom-com. Because of an amazing supporting cast I’d say this is slightly better than Christmas Casanova but not as good as the rom-com’s listed in the first half of this post. Bonus point because this isn’t really a holiday movie and you can enjoy it anytime of year.
Red One. North Pole action. Santa has been kidnapped and his head of security (Dwane Johnson) recruits J.K. Simmons to help find and recover him. This was an excellent movie with an interesting hi-tech take on Santa’s village. Even though it has Santa themes this one probably doesn’t work for younger children but will definitely be appreciated by the older crowd. Give it a watch but don’t expect it to replace Die Hard on your holiday action watchlist.
Bridget Jones’s Baby. Rom-com. Remember how I talked about those films who you know you watched some of but maybe not every one in the series? Bridget Jones was on that list for us. In the end I was pretty sure that we had actually watched this movie but, even though it is very well done and has an amazing cast, it had just failed to stick in my mind. Bridget is pregnant and isn’t sure which amazing man is the father, she decides to just ride things out by letting them both believe they may be Dad for as long as possible. I enjoy these movies but Bridget is truly a disaster, and some of her choices feel just a bit unkind. Worth a watch but doesn’t hold a candle to my favorite this year, Definitely, Maybe.
Thanks for staying with me as I recapped a full month of movies! I can’t wait to hear what your favorites were this season or what you thought of any of the films that made our list this year. Any recommendations for us to watch next year? I want to start building my list now!
Happy New Year! We should be back to our weekly publishing schedule now that the holidays have passed. In the end I have to say that Haddaway was wrong, at least in terms of a good rom-com, conflict and crisis are necessary and someone must be hurt. But for now I will end with another profound line from the same great song, “I can’t go on” (with this blog post).
