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Francisco Raya
But not all Christmas movies are created equal. Sure, the stories may be awfully similar, but the quality can vary wildly. Ideally, you want something that hits that spot between sweet and silly, striking a good balance between romcom absurdity and a genuine expression of seasonal joy. So let us help you sort the proverbial shiny new bikes from the lumps of coal. Here are the best Christmas movies to stream on Netflix this year.
This oddball origin story of Santa Klaus is the first animated feature from Netflix, and features Klaus (Oscar-winner J. K. Simmons), a large, bearded man with a knack for toymaking but who doesn't have much interest in children, Jesper (Jason Schwartzman), the worst postal carrier ever and Alva (Rashida Jones), a cynical teacher. They live in Smeerensburg, the unhappiest place on Earth. If it sounds like a grump-fest, well yes, that's the setup. But don't worry: Icy hearts melt, and even Smeerensburg can find joy. Rated PG.
Part Prince and the Pauper, part The Parent Trap, this rom-com features Vanessa Hudgens as a humble baker who swaps places with the princess of a vaguely European country just in time for the holidays. A threequel debuts November 18, making this an enduring holiday series that will likely continue for as long as royalty remains unable to detect American accents and traces of flour and baking powder on gowns. Rated PG.
The production value is abysmal! The colors are so washed out and none of the shots are nice to look at. Frankly, the lesbian segments are not any more interesting than the rest of the film, which has no color (literally and figuratively).
The Christmas Lottery is a BET original film that follows a Houston family who reunite over Christmas. The family patriarch, Gerald (Reginald VelJohnson) invites his semi-estranged daughters home for the holidays after he wins the lottery. When his wife, who has dementia, loses the ticket, the squabbling sisters must work together to retrieve it.
Once again, Every Time A Bell Rings follows three sisters who are reunited over the holidays. Nora has stayed in their hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, and is struggling to start a business, Emily (Runaways actress Brittany Ishibashi) is a work-obsessed businesswoman thinking about starting a family, and Charlotte (Erin Cahill) is busy traveling the world with the Peace Corps. They rekindle their bond when they discover their dearly departed father has created one last Christmas scavenger hunt for them to complete.
There are many things to love about the holiday season (if you happen to be a Christmas lover like myself), and one of them is the seemingly endless supply of Christmas movies. There are the classics, like It\u2019s A Wonderful Life and White Christmas, but there\u2019s also the yearly deluge of cheesy Netflix and Hallmark movies that all have essentially the same plot. Unfortunately for us, very few of these offerings involve lesbians in any way.
The idea that lesbians also belong in Christmas movies has gotten slightly more popular over the last couple of years, with both Lifetime and Hallmark recently releasing their first Christmas movies with lesbians in them. Still, the list of movies that could be categorized as \u201Clesbian Christmas movies\u201D remains very short.
Since I know I\u2019m not the only one wishing Christmas movies were gayer, I decided to create a handy guide to all the lesbian Christmas movies out there. My definition of a lesbian Christmas movie is any Christmas film that has a lesbian main character (secondary characters don\u2019t count). I\u2019ve also opted not to include Carol on this list even though it is my preferred Christmas movie because it kind of blows the competition out of the water and it wouldn\u2019t be fair to rate the other films alongside it. I\u2019m also not including Rent here, even though I do consider it a Christmas movie.
My very convoluted rating system is as follows: an overall rating for the film as a whole, the production value rating (i.e. how it looks/how well the budget is used), the cringe rating (a higher rating is worse in this case, at least in my opinion), the chemistry rating, the holiday cheer rating, and a lesbian focus rating (how central the lesbians are to the overall plot of the film). I hope you are able to follow all of that. Obviously, these ratings are entirely objective, and you have every right to disagree with me wholeheartedly, but I hope you\u2019ll at least appreciate my desire to constructively spread holiday cheer. Happy holigays!
Friends & Family Christmas is Ali Liebert\u2019s second lesbian Hallmark Christmas movie, and what a blessing she is to the genre. While she had to share the spotlight with straight people in her previous film, this one goes full lesbian. Liebert plays Amelia, a workaholic lawyer still reeling from her breakup last Christmas. Humberly Gonz\u00E1lez plays Dani, a photographer who neglects to go home for Christmas in favor of working in The City. Their fathers are old buddies and try to set them up together. Neither are happy about the situation, but they decide to play along in order to get their parents off their backs. They start to develop feelings for each other along the way, but a series of miscommunications leads to Christmas heartbreak. Will they get their happy-ever-after? (Yes, the answer is obviously yes.)
Liebert is the perfect lesbian Hallmark heartthrob \u2013 she has just the right sort of dorky charm and kills in the \u2018uptight but genuinely lovable woman\u2019 role. There are several references to Carol in this film, which is low-hanging fruit but ultimately pretty cute. The cheesy Hallmark dialogue and low-budget sets are hilarious(ly bad), but it\u2019s quite watchable and very sweet. Ali Liebert 4ever.
Christmas On The Ranch is a movie from Tello Films, a production company that focuses on LGBTQ women\u2019s content. The company\u2019s founder, Christin Baker, also directed the film, among several others for Tello. The movie follows Haley (Laur Allen), a young woman who lives in San Francisco and works in marketing. She is called back to Tennessee by her brother and grandma \u2013 who raised her following the death of her parents \u2013 when she learns the family ranch is in trouble. While trying to work out if the ranch can be saved, Haley meets the dashing but combative ranch hand, Kate (Amanda Righetti, who you may know from The Mentalist).
Kate spends her days talking to horses and wishing she had a girlfriend, while Haley\u2019s last date in the city was a disaster. When they meet by chance on a dating app, sparks immediately fly, but things turn sour when they discover each other\u2019s real identities. (Before their first date, Kate realizes she doesn\u2019t have any makeup on her so she tries to put eyeliner on using\u2026matches?) But, not to worry, they\u2019re brought back together by an all-time classic plot \u2013 the \u201Cthere\u2019s only one bed\u201D trope. Together, they just might have it in them to save the ranch and also fall in love in the process.
The production value here certainly isn\u2019t the best \u2013 too much ADR! \u2013 but the central couple is cute. A Christmas movie starring a hot lesbian cowgirl is certainly something we\u2019ve been missing as a culture. Haley is a pretty annoying character at times, but it tends to be the case in rom-coms like this that one of the characters is kind of an asshole. This one goes out to all the gay horse girls.
This movie is really bad! I wouldn\u2019t recommend it. (Though I do thank one of my readers for suggesting I add it to the list, if only for accuracy\u2019s sake.) Modeled after Love, Actually, the film follows six different characters/couples spending the evening in a New York City hotel. I\u2019m not going to tell you about the straight characters because they are irrelevant and really boring.
The lesbians are played by Tracie Thoms and Jasika Nicole, which is the only good thing about this movie. Their storyline is that Jasika Nicole wants to have a baby but Tracie Thoms is being weird and dismissive about it. They are terrible at communicating and need to go to therapy but Tracie eventually reveals why she\u2019s being so avoidant (trauma).
The eldest sister, Deidre (Asia'h Epperson), has stayed home to help her father run the cafe and help care for her mother and is resentful of her younger sisters for leaving her alone with the responsibility. Deidre is also a lesbian and has an adorable wife, Belinda (Phyli'cia Lloyd), who bakes delicious cakes and is estranged from her homophobic family. The middle sister, Nicole (Brave Williams), is a high-flying girlboss who\u2019s obsessed with work, and the youngest, Tammy, is a struggling musician who is always borrowing money from everyone. (Tammy happens to be played by Real Housewives of Potomac star Candiace Dillard Bassett.)
I wasn\u2019t expecting to like this one as much as I did, and while it was very silly, what saved it was the chemistry between the three sisters. Some of it was legitimately funny, such as the scene where their dad forces them to duke it out in sumo suits when they won\u2019t stop arguing. The lesbian big sister was a bit of a Debbie-downer \u2013 as is often the case with the characters who stay behind in Christmas movies \u2013 but I loved her relationship with her sweet wife. My favorite character was actually Nicole, the middle sister, who turns out to be less of a hard-ass than she pretends to be. It\u2019s one of the only films in this crossover genre to feature an all-black or POC cast, which is definitely a bonus. There is also a Traci Braxton cameo at the end.
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