Christmas Classics: Exmas
Sometimes at night, I turn my television on to illuminate the room a little. Over the last few days they’ve been pushing the movie Exmas on Freevee so I watched it. I expected this to be a high budget Hallmark film. In reality the film is a screwball comedy that parodies a Hallmark movie. With Hallmark movies you know what you’re gonna get. Some bad acting, puzzling writing at times and some very predictable arcs. Exmas, for the most part has none of those things.
The premise is simple. Graham (Robbie Amell) can’t go home to Christmas because he has to work. But then he changes his mind a few days before and decides to go anyway. Upon arriving at his family’s house, he finds that his ex-girlfriend Alli (Leighton Meester) is there. The two renew their beef and try to get each other kicked out by Graham’s family through a series of elaborate pranks.
What makes Exmas work is its awareness. It knows what type of movie it is and how to be funny within a variety of ways within that context while also maintaining a degree of seriousness and heart. It’s a surprisingly adult movie too, with a lot of sexual references, drug use and mature humor. The movie’s balance between straightforward humor, satirical writing and situational humor was refreshing for both a comedy and a Christmas movie. It felt very contemporary and modern with it’s perspectives.
Like most screwball comedies, the movie isn’t a minute to minute laugh fest but is consistently engaging and amusing due to it’s dynamics and situations. It relies more on creating payoff through it’s quirky character building and slowly developing towards funny sequences as opposed to simply lining up jokes with punchlines. Though it’s not a long movie at only 133 minutes, it does take it’s time. Whether it ends up having the desired impact or not, every payoff does feel earned through the structure of the movie. It’s got a much tighter script than a Hallmark movie and the events taking place on screen make sense for the most part.
As I mentioned before, it’s a very 2020s film, with many of the trappings of today’s humor and it’s conventions. The snarky take on modern dating and hookup culture, the carefree attitude on marijuana and of course, a crisis where someone takes their phone out to film rather than help. It’s a movie that understands its audience and what they want in a Christmas movie like this. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and holds the same minor irreverence towards Christmas that many Zoomers and Millenials hold. As someone who celebrates the holiday but doesn’t go to church anymore, the idea of having to go to Church on Christmas morning is absurd.
There are lot of things on the Stroop schedule that don’t make sense. It feels like there’s about 4-5 days worth of things that happen over a 2 day span in this movie and some of the time frames are a little odd. There’s a very bizarre “Christmas Eve at the nightclub” sequence, a hockey sequence that, while clever, feels like a misstep and a few baffling “why is this here” scenes, alongside some scenes that take the joke a bit too far. The film balances it’s romance plot and humor well but there is a janky B/C story in there involving Graham’s sister that feels very forced.
The reality is, I don’t think Exmas is actually some brilliant piece of cinema, but again I was pleasantly surprised by it’s entertainment value and execution. It’s got a good heart and the acting is genuinely strong, particularly between our two leads. Some of the characters are really fun when they’re on screen. Kathy Greenwood and Michael Hitchcock do a good job as the Stroop parents. Unfortunately, some of the side characters (for example the patsy love interests) are cringy and half-baked, even if they have some rewarding moments. The writing typically tends to work around the defiencies of these characters but the movie is still weaker for it.
Would I watch this movie again? I could be convinced. I liked the leads and some of the moments. I was very impressed with the contemporary style of the film. But at the end of the day while I thought it was successful at what it was trying to do I just don’t think it was an a great movie from a pure film critique standpoint. It’s a warts and all experience but it really is trying hard and I think it’s a pretty solid live action Christmas romantic comedy when it comes down to it. As a cynic I probably gave more credit to the film’s tongue in cheek style than I should have but I genuinely don’t think it was very bad. It’s a surprisingly nuanced film with how it treats humor, genre, setting and of course, Christmas but if you’re receptive to it you’ll find that Exmas might surprise.
