(courtesy IMP Awards)
In a world where hype and PR all too often turn out to have more substance than the thing they’re promoting, it’s always a pleasant, if low-key, delight when something turns out to be better than the vehicle used to promote it.
Champagne Problems is one such example of something that, if the lightweight, near sugary confected trailer was any indication, was going to be so ephemeral and emotionally vacuous that it would pass through your pop culture imbibing system so quickly that you’d barely don’t notice its passing let along recall its presence at all.
So, hype from Netflix that it was a bona fide hit and a Christmas treasure for the ages, now happily resident in their global Top 10 aside, this reviewer dived into one of the streaming service’s weekly tentpole offerings this festive season not expecting all that much.
Well apart from a great deal of wincing at the cheesiness of it all, one-note soundings of its barely-there, cardboard-cutout characters and a plot so threadbare you could look right through it to the festive movie on offer.
But rather wonderfully, and I’ll take all the unexpected wonder I can stuff into a Christmas stocking, thank you very much, Champagne Problems turned out to be quite a bit more involving and emotionally resonant than the hype doctor indicated.
Now to be clear, Champagne Problems will not be up for any Oscars or BAFTAs as we roll into 2026, and it’s not a searing exploration of the existential trials and tribulations of a vineyard owner in France’s Champagne region as he faces widowhood, family succession issues and foreign ownership of sovereign French assets.
But then the film was never intended to approach its subject matter on any of those levels; which is fair enough really because it is a good old-fashioned romcom with plot devices and tropes and cliches abundant enough to fill a cinematic antiques store, its sole purpose to remind us again of how magical the season is and that it is the time of year when people fall in love and change their lives on the basis of a few days of divergent lived experience.
Sydney Price (Minka Kelly) is a hard-edged deal closer for a massive global drinks brands group, the Roth Group, who is tasked on the basis of a breathlessly delivered presentation to a board room full of near-identical blue-suited men, with heading to France for a few days to seal the deal to buy a much sought-after champagne brand, Château Cassell.
The mission is supposed to be a quick two-day in-and-out deal where she will dazzle the owner of the business, Hugo Cassell, send the champagne business into the hands of the Roth Group’s stereotypically ruthless owner (all the villains in festive romcoms must be larger-than-life cartoon villains) and everyone can live happily corporately ever after.
But first Sydney, who in the very best of all Hallmark-ian festive romcoms – this is not one but it bears all the, ahem, hallmarks of said movies including a workaholic woman in need of a life change of deeply transformative proportions – lands in Paris, and as per a pinky swear with her barely-in-the-scene sister Skyler (Maeve Courtier-Lili (who, naturally enough, is a free spirit with just $18 who has LIVED), takes one night to live a little.
As you can likely guess, Sydney no sooner finds the mysterious bookstore, Les Etoiles (The Stars), recommended to her by the likeable, father-figure concierge – weirdly for a spontaneous decision, and Champagne Problems makes a big deal of Sydney’s last-minute whimsicality in this regard, she has a strictly-timed list of items on her itinerary and a booking a must-eat-at cafe – than she bumps into a hunky, sweet, in-touch-with-his-inner-child Frenchman named Henri (Tom Wozniczka) whom she mistakes for an employee of the store.
He helps find a selection of books she wants to passively-aggressively buy for her sister – all the titles all largely talk about getting your sh*t together and not leaching off others (yeah, Sydney, is not subtle) – before admitting he doesn’t work there and could he ask her out which Sydney agrees to after only the most cursory of “is this guy a serial killer” pondering.
Thus ensues a magical night in Paris where Henri and Sydney fall in love, sleep together in Henri’s bougie loft apartment, and , who saw this coming (we all did), Sydney sleeps in, almost missing her appointment with Hugo Cassell (if there’s one significant bug bear with this otherwise lovely if ridiculously improbably-plotted film, it’s that Sydney is neutered into professional stupidity within hours of reaching France by love; surely even a newly lovestruck but otherwise hard-edged businesswoman could set an alarm?).
Things work okay though because Hugo is a little unorthodox and Sydney finds herself whisked off, with three other competitors – Otto Moller (Flula Borg), purely there for obvious jokes about German culture (from an American perspective), gay bon vivant Roberto Salazar (Sean Amsing), there purely for scene stealing and all the best comedic lines, and ruthlessly intent Brigitte Laurent) who will stop at nothing to seal the deal – to his chateau for a weekend of tests and checks to decide who gets to buy his champagne brand.
Now, if you have ever watched any of these movies (and indeed the trailer), you will know that Henri is Hugo’s son, awkwardness results when Sydney realises that and their path to love and happy ever after – hardly a spoiler – is rather bumpy but full of heartfelt conversations, misunderstandings and a rushed dash to save love before it withers and dies, ahem, on the vine.
Startlingly original Champagne Problems is not and you can see where it is going from a mile off BUT, and this is a crucial BUT, for all of the expected assembled pieces in the screenplay by Mark Steven Johnson, who also directed the film, it all turns out to be a rather delightful, heartwarmingly good, if lighter-than-air (in the best possible way) romcom that shows true love, Christmas and Paris off to their respectively transcendent best.
Unlike some romcoms where all the tropes and cliches are so obviously stuffed in that it feels like you can see ALL the moving parts and its not pretty, Champagne Problems us greater than the sum of its parts, a confection of festive delights that sweeps away all your intellectual critiques in favour of a swoon-heavy, sigh-worthy story that absolutely delivers on Christmas as the most wonderful time of the year.