(courtesy IMP Awards)
Christmas is the season where love is all around us, and you’ll be happy to know, it’s not just Love, Actually that thinks so.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas is also a big believer in the power of the season to change hearts and minds and even wind the clock backwards … or is that forward with all the old parts coming together again?
Whatever your perspective, the first festive romcom cab off the rank for Netflix for Christmas 2025 turns out to be a charming delight which takes some well-worn pieces and makes something light, bright and charmingly funny, just the sort of thing you want after a hard year which, like most years, has well and truly taken its pound of flesh from you existentially (although, let’s be honest, it can often like it literal, too).
On face value, the story of a couple divorcing, and in a coffee shop no less – odd choice in the small town they live in which, like most Christmas romcom locales, is a hotbed of gossip and suffocating social closeness which everyone pretends to adore – doesn’t sound like it would do much to cheer the cockles of your world-weary heart.
After all, we’re after escapist joy and diversionary festive pleasure, right?
Right. Rather happily though that is precisely what A Merry Little Ex-Mas serves up with a gently humourous and likably low key way, introducing us to Kate and Everett (Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson respectively) who have decided to call it quits after their marriage has gone stale and Kate has decided she’s had enough of playing second fiddle to Everett’s other priorities.
They are done and dusted but determined to “consciously uncouple” – yes, that blighted phrase “gifted” by Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow that really needs to vacate here and now, thank you – with love, warmth and a bevy of pop psychological phrases, chief among them “I feel …” which is used to preface even the most passive-aggressive of sentences, with ever tighter enunciation.
Both Kate and Everett are going to celebrate one last Christmas together for the sake of their kids, Gabriel and Sienna (Wilder Hudson and Emily Hall respectively), with Sienna’s goofily sweet and a little bit weird British boyfriend Nigel (naturally), played with likeable charm by Timothy Innes despite all the British cliches lumbered by the chains of A Christmas Carol‘s Marley around his character, and dammit, it will be just like old times.
But only it won’t, will it?
You know from the moment those words leave the mouthes of Kate and Everett in almost A Merry Little Ex-Mas‘s first scene that things will go hilariously and messily off the Christmas decorative train tracks and much mirth and slapstick merriment will ensue.
But rather cleverly, and honestly A Merry Little Ex-Mas is far more thoughtful a film than the trailer would give you any reason to expect it to be, the film, written by Holly Hester and directed by Steve Carr, eschews full bore slapstick nonsense, aiming instead for amiable silliness, helped along by Kate and Everett’s respective new partners, Tess Wiley, played by the gloriously good Jameela Jamil who eats all her scenes alive, and Chet More (Pierson Fodé who is hot and charmingly clueless, though not completely).
You know, of course, that these two have a limited romantic shelf life, and that by movie’s end, they will be mere footnotes in the restorative festive loveliness of Kate and Everett’s near-inevitable reconciliation, but while they are in their respective scenes, they give A Merry Little Ex-Mas extra buzz and comedic vivacity as all doomed new loves are supposed to do.
Tess, particularly, could have come across as a nasty piece of marriage-wrecking nastiness but in Jamil’s comedically assured hands, she is vulnerable, funny and even at her snippiest, you can well understand why she reacts the way she does.
Like every viewer even remotely paying attention to the less-than-subtle script, she knows she is playing a losing game from the word go, her hold on Everett slipping the moment she meets Kate and realises that their love story is a long, long way from over.
Her days as the rebound girlfriend are numbered and she knows it, even though she tries to swim against the tide until she realises the current of love, true love from Kate and Everett is just too strong to swim against; by way of sweetly hilarious contrast, himbo Chet has no clue and thinks that he and Kate may yet sail off into the sort of sunset that older women supposedly find their ripped and goofy new loves.
The fun thing about A Merry Little Ex-Mas, apart from the sheer likability of all the characters, especially Silverstone as Kate who has some great lines and delivers them beautifully, is that it takes all of these quite obvious pieces and makes something slightly original and quite enjoyable out of them.
The film doesn’t even come close to reinventing any kind of festive romcom wheel, and honestly, rather refreshingly, it’s not even trying to, but what it does do well is tell the story of two people losing love, though not really, finding it again and living as a couple to celebrate another Christmas or fifty, with real charm, fun comedic timing and some lovely romantic authenticity (well, as much as a confected romcom can manage, anyway).
The trailer might make you think it’s all going to be ridiculously obvious and slapstick 101, and while to some extent it is, A Merry Little Ex-Mas is way better than you expect it’s going to be, serving up the kind of festive bling we all want, that sense of small town Christmassy bonhomie these types of movies do so well, and most of all, a heartwarming sense of love true love, healing, redemption and hope, all the kinds of good things Christmas is supposed to serve up, that is delivered with sweetness, lightness and a lovely sense that, opening scenes aside, everything is going to turn out okay for everyone by the end.
And who doesn’t want that for Christmas?