Best Cringey Christmas Movies to Binge

It’s December! Can you feel it? The smell of peppermint and evergreen in the air. The sensation of being either too cold or too hot all the time. The knowledge that holiday shopping is just a capitalist scheme to get you to spend money making you put the bare minimum effort into buying people presents while simultaneously holding unrealistic expectations of what others get for you. The crushing despair of having to justify all of your life choices to family members, even though they just interrogated you three weeks ago. Truly the happiest season of all.

Never fear because what makes up for it all are the ridiculous, over-the-top, sickeningly sweet, so-cringey-you-can-only-watch-them-through-your fingers … holiday movies! I’ve already done the research on which ones are the best (read: worst), so all you have to do is crack open a new one (trust me, you’ll want a drink) and have fun.

If you’ve chosen to read this article, you’ve probably already seen A Christmas Prince. In this movie, an ambitious but undervalued journalist with sassy friends travels to a small European country to cover a press conference about the future of the (frankly irrelevant) throne. She ends up living undercover as a tutor and kinda sorta dating the prince. She must choose between love and career while battling the evil, power-hungry, throne-snatching relatives of the royal family. What ever will she do?

Also watch: A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby 

Have you ever watched Enchanted and thought, I like that movie but they should strip away 90 percent of the drama and set it during Christmastime? Well, you’re in luck! A 14th-century knight mysteriously time travels to modern America, gets hit by a car driven by Vanessa Hudgens’s character (prompting her to take him in), and the two predictably fall in love. You also cannot forget the obscenely shameless product placement of Amazon Alexa devices in this movie.

A magic elevator. Creepy old people. A truly dickish fiancé. And a hot baker. I don’t know what more you could possibly ask for in a stereotypical rom-com. In fact, it contains so many romantic comedy tropes that I’m convinced the screenplay was written by a couple of film students for a satire class.

Advent calendars are nifty inventions that count down the days until Christmas and tide you over with little gifts while doing so. The makers of this movie apparently enjoy them so much that they decided to center the plot around a magical advent calendar that tells fortunes and hints at future love. Everything the characters go through happens regardless of what the calendar foretells, but you get an added layer of suspense that makes you unreasonably invested in this feel-good movie.

The love child between The Parent Trap and Princess Protection Program, this movie ranks at the top of this list for its slightly superior narrative logic. Ninety-nine percent of the screen time consists of Vanessa Hudgens smiling into the camera, given that she plays both main characters (a soon-to-be-married foreign princess and an American baker in a prestigious competition) who trade lives for a day and end up falling in love with the other’s significant other.

The one plot hole is that the baker’s significant other is supposed to be her best friend, but he doesn’t notice “she” suddenly has a completely different personality. And after he finds out about the switch, he’s totally fine being with the doppelgänger, instead of the original girl he supposedly had a years-long crush on (which is very sus).

Also watch: The Princess Switch: Switched Again

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There are certainly a ton of holiday movies available on streaming services right now and even more will come out this month. I, for one, am curious about the surefire cinematic masterpiece coming out soon called, I kid you not, A Trash Truck Christmas. But, before these new movies premiere, you can savor the classics above. Please enjoy responsibly.

–Kaei Li, Content Creator