It’s been a surprisingly solid start for the Netflix-Mas Movies of 2025! So far, we’ve reviewed the 3 big Christmas releases – Alicia Silverstone in A Merry Little Ex-Mas, Minka Kelly in Champagne Problems, & Olivia Holt in Jingle Bell Heist – with positive results above expectations. Each week, the movies have been better than the last, with Jingle Bell Heist currently holding our #1 spot for the holiday season. With only one film left (I don’t think Kate Winslet’s Goodbye June really belongs in this category), can this week’s entry grab the top spot?

From producer Howard Braunstein & Netflix Studios, My Secret Santa is the latest holiday romantic comedy from director Mike Rohl, the filmmaker behind all 3 Princess Switch movies for the streamer over the last decade. The film is co-written by Falling For Christmas scribe Ron Oliver & screenwriter of several TV/Streaming holiday movies Carley Smale (Snowed-Inn Christmas, Yes Chef Christmas). 

Now, I’ve watched my fair share of Netflix holiday films over the past several years since I started with The Christmas Chronicles in 2018. Some with big stars that are good (Jingle Jangle, The first Christmas Chronicles), some with big stars that aren’t so good (Best. Christmas. Ever! is an abomination), and every range of star & quality in-between. But I don’t think I’ve watched anything truly close to My Secret Santa.

The world the film lives in seems unlike anything I’ve encountered in real life. A “Mad Libs” or word salad of things that sound rom-com or Christmas-related, but don’t entirely sound like the way they would in our reality. 

My Secret Santa. (L to R) Alexandra Breckenridge as Taylor and Ryan Eggold as Matthew in My Secret Santa. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2025

A single mother, Taylor Jacobsen (Virgin River star Alexandra Breckenridge), loses her job as a Christmas cookie factory worker of some variety due to downsizing from society’s loss of interest in store-bought holiday cookies. She is immediately behind in her rent and can’t afford the supposedly prestigious snowboarding academy that her daughter got into without her knowledge. While looking for jobs, she realizes that she can get 50% off tuition if she works at the ski hotel/resort at which the snowboarding academy will teach her daughter. Once there, she finds out that the only open position at the ski hotel/resort is that of a Santa Claus who magically gets paid 2k a week if memory serves. Naturally, she turns to her brother, a costume creator/makeup artist, to create a convincing Santa look & suit to land her the job she so desperately needs. Sounds reasonable, right? No? I agree, but let’s continue.

After she lands the job under an absurd fake name and her REAL SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, she enrolls her daughter into the academy and everything is just fine, paid up, and rolling right along (don’t think at all about how the job got her 50% off when she’s under an assumed name that isn’t known to be a relative of her daughter at all … DON’T DO IT!). But there is one more catch: she meets an attractive man named Matthew (“New Amsterdam” star Ryan Eggold) in a record shop who knows her former band and recognizes her as the lead singer; he wants to go on a date with her and pursues her over many attempts, but there’s an issue – he’s the son of the ski hotel/resort owner and her new boss! Taylor must figure out how she can have it all and make it to Christmas without anyone being the wiser. 

Now, setting aside the largely preposterous and logically wrongfooted framework of the first 30-40 minutes AND the Santa voice that Taylor uses that can only be described as Amanda Bynes in She’s The Man level of bad (a movie Alexandra Breckenridge is in btw) AND the miscasting of Eggold if he’s supposed to be a rich guy screw-up on a tabloid level, the movie does switch to a more interesting, heartfelt level as the story progresses. After Taylor as Santa almost gets fired for poor performance and has a heart-to-heart with her daughter to find out what she really wants for Christmas, she comes around to being an almost therapeutic version of Santa with kids and adults finding comfort in letting young kids express their true feelings at a vulnerable time of year. Taylor, as Santa, also finds time to dig deep on the emotional state of her daughter’s bully and give a spiritual lift to the community as a whole, even when they find out the truth. 

The creators also try their best attempt at recreating the magic of the restaurant scene at the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, which, as a massive fan of that film, I felt mixed emotions; an homage of a classic with a reasonably funny shot of the painted toenails of a woman and Santa boots as the sounds of thrusting come from a Men’s room bathroom will probably work for most people, but I may be too close to it to verify. 

My Secret Santa. (L to R) Ryan Eggold as Matthew and Alexandra Breckenridge as Santa Claus in My Secret Santa. Cr. Diyah Pera/Netflix ©2025

All in all, you can tell that fun was had making this film; maybe not on the days when Breckenridge has to be in prosthetic makeup for a few hours, but definitely while creating some of the wildly absurd things that occur in the film. The script is the letdown here, as it feels more like an AI fever dream than any fault of its lead actors. My gift to everyone involved will be my lack of commentary on the “musical performances” in the movie or the liberal use of “punk rock”. Merry Christmas to all involved. 

Maybe I’m not used to the “of course it’s insane, it’s a Christmas movie” level of holiday film or maybe I like a semblance of realism in a non-fantastical version of a Christmas story, but after 3 straight quality Netflix Christmas films, unfortunately My Secret Santa should have stayed a secret, long buried where put the ark of the Covenant perhaps. This one didn’t work for me, which of course means it will be as big as Hot Frosty or any other illogical, zeitgeist-crossing megahit that Netflix will produce this time of year. 

Watch My Secret Santa If You Liked

• Falling For Christmas
• The Princess Switch Trilogy
• Virgin River
• New Amsterdam

MVP

Ryan Eggold as Matthew

While I REALLY know that I should give this to Breckenridge for the effort alone of donning the prosthetics & the costumes, I cannot give anything to the voice of Santa that just took me out of the movie entirely. 

For me, even in all the noise, Ryan Eggold just has such a warm, hug-type of presence in the film that makes him pop in every scene he’s in. He felt like a man in a Christmas movie as a bearded, kind-hearted soul who just wants to do better and be with someone who’s good and good for him. Eggold’s fine features and captivating smile made him too easy a casting, especially since he does not seem like an irresponsible trust-fund man-child in the slightest. 

One of the classic “this only gets made or even remotely makes sense because it’s a Christmas movie” premises that does not live up to the label as a “modern, merry Mrs. Doubtfire”. 

Michelle Pfeiffer plays a mom on the edge at Christmas time in the new movie “Oh. What. Fun.” If the sarcastic punctuation wasn’t enough of a tip off, Pfeiffer’s character Claire is not having the best time.

Claire’s grown kids (Felicity Jones, Chloë Grace Moretz, Dominic Sessa ) don’t appreciate her efforts. Her husband (Denis Leary) is supportive without being helpful. And she is operating as a one woman show, managing this precious time with her family and trying to keep it all cozy and happy and fun through constant, thankless labor (cooking, cleaning, wrapping, planning). She even looks fabulous on her many, many (too many?) garbage runs. But after one particularly cruel oversight from her family, she takes off from her suburban prison and doesn’t tell anyone. For once, she’s decided to go do something for herself.

Promising though it may seem, “Oh. What. Fun” is a movie that does very little with its setup and terrific cast (including the likes of Danielle Brooks, Joan Chen, Maude Apatow, Rose Abdoo and Eva Longoria in almost cameo-sized roles) opting instead for the most generic version of itself.

The movie, streaming Wednesday on Prime Video, begins with a kind of “low point” (for a beautiful, well-off, stay-at-home Texas mom, that is) in which she tells some children in a neighboring car at a gas station to be nicer to their exhausted mother in the front seat. “She’ll be dead someday,” she says calmly and seriously. She wishes the mother a Merry Christmas, gives the kids a piercing look and then we get the dreaded freeze-frame/record scratch and a voiceover about being entitled to a little outburst around the holidays and a half-hearted rant about how many holiday movies are about men. Already this movie is making this poor woman apologize.

“They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays: Moms,” Claire says. Sure, yes, preach Claire, even if her exclusions are suspect and her examples need further review. I’m pretty sure “Home Alone” was at least a little bit about the mom, and that “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” doesn’t deserve the vitriol. Alas, noble intentions aside, “Oh. What. Fun.” probably wasn’t what she had in mind.

Director Michael Showalter co-wrote the script with the short story’s author, Chandler Baker and is committed to keeping the proceedings light and breezy (no cancer diagnoses here). But the effect is a movie that seems almost embarrassed to commit to its own silly premise, rushing through everything instead of letting us enjoy this cast. Everyone gets assigned one tidy problem or flaw and no one has any sort of lived-in familial chemistry with one another.

Channing (Jones) is the oldest and is married to Doug (Jason Schwartzman) who really wants her younger sister Taylor (Moretz) to think he’s cool although Taylor, a serial monogamist who always brings a new woman home for the holidays, is just mean to him. Sessa is the youngest: Underemployed and recently dumped. There are two grandchildren too, Channing and Doug’s twins, but they’re nonentities.

Claire wants one thing for Christmas: For her family to have submitted her to a contest to meet her favorite daytime talk show host, Zazzy Tims (Longoria). Of course no one got the hint. But her breaking point really comes when she realizes everyone has gone to an event that she planned without her. No one noticed she wasn’t in one of the cars. And so instead of driving herself to meet them, she decides to drive to Burbank and crash the Zazzy Tims show instead.

Showalter attempts to turn this road trip into a kind of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” journey, even having her share a dingy motel room with Brooks, playing a suspiciously contented delivery driver (a little on the nose for an Amazon movie). But it barely commits to the bit and they soon go their separate ways instead of embarking on a buddy trip.

There must be a kind of director’s jail for such restrained use of a performer like Schwartzman (as Claire’s son-in-law), or using Chen as a one-joke “perfect” neighbor with her all-white and silver Christmas decorations.

In its own way, “Oh. What. Fun.” has also accidentally tapped into the cinematic zeitgeist. This is a year in which on screen mothers aren’t just on the edge – they’re in complete and total freefall. Jennifer Lawrence’s feral barking in “Die My Love,” Rose Byrne’s waking nightmare in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Jessie Buckley’s primal agony in “Hamnet.” Even Teyana Taylor’s postpartum apathy in “One Battle After Another” could fit.

Lighter versions are welcome too – there’s nothing like comedic release. But if the idea was to make something for the moms, “Oh. What. Fun.” is about as thoughtful as a hastily scribbled card on a piece of printer paper the morning of her birthday. We can all do better.

“Oh. What. Fun.” An Amazon MGM Studios release streaming Dec. 3 is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 106 minutes. Two stars out of four.

2.5/5 stars

Any suspicion that logic would prevail over the cool factor is dispelled in the opening scene, when No 4, the poker-faced Hong Kong assassin played by Ngai, engages his unarmed target in a brutal brawl on a moving tram before finally strangling him. He could have simply started with the strangulation.

The “vendetta” in the film’s English title refers partly to No 4’s traumatic childhood, during which he survived a mystery attack that resulted in his mother’s beheading, before being taken in by a secret organisation of assassins. The connection between these events is as straightforward as one might guess.