(courtesy IMP Awards)
Is grand larceny the path to true love?
Not typically, no, but this is Christmas and when the festive season comes calling, it seems that anything and everything is possible.
Which is just as well for Jingle Bell Heist, a festive London-set romcom which asks what might happen if two goodhearted people in dire situations were to meet and in the course of plotting an elaborate if amateurish robbery of a very nasty, almost cartoon villain-ish department store owner fell headlong and rather tenderly and wholly sweetly in love?
Well, good viewers of festive romcoms, which even more than their non-Christmas counterparts, stick rigidly to a set formula which brooks no deviation (of course we love this), what happens is, of course, that these two lovely people Sophia Martin (Olivia Holt) and Nick O’Connor (Connor Swindells) find love true love under twinkling lights and in the very worst of times and have their lives rather beautifully transformed.
But shhhh, that’s not even hinted at first and when Jingle Bell Heist unveils its sprightly and playful and yet also emotionally intense first act, it doesn’t look like Nick, who was accused and pled guilty to a crime he didn’t commit and has lost his marriage and might still lose his daughter, and Sophia, whose mum is sick in hospital with some unspecified but BAD disease (maybe cancer but it needs a radical experimental treatment she can’t afford, yes, even in the UK), are in line for any kind of seasonally heartwarming breaks of the transformative kind.
Their meeting is less meet cute than blackmail heavy but Sophia is more than able to stand up for herself, and it’s only when it emerges she needs lots of money and fast to help her mum, that she takes up Nick’s offer to raid the lucrative lost and found section of the high-end department store, Sterlings, where she works.
What ensues is a kind of low-key Ocean’s 11 vibe where Nick and Sophia, neither of whom are accomplished criminals by any stretch – though Nick, of course, would have you believe otherwise – plot to rob evil, nasty department store baron (boo! hiss!) Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz) of lots of money and goods.
Jingle Bell Heist, which for all its darker, sobering elements still feels playful and bouncy in its romcom-ness, makes it very clear, pantomime-like, that we are to hate on the Maxwell (who is pretty odious) and love on Nick and Sophia who are essentially kindhearted, thoughtfully loving people forced to do illegal things for very good reasons.
It’s all very Robin Hood-like but it works rather nicely, thanks to Swindells’ gift for playing vulnerable guys who look hard-edged but who really aren’t, and Holt’s ability to project an air of beleaguered sadness mixed with a toughness that has helped her get through some rather dark times in her life.
Making the two leads so obviously inherently good and likeable matters because Christmas romcoms like Jingle Bell Heist depend on us wanting the people at the centre of the story to get the good and wonderful things coming to them and to not, even for a second, hate them for even the slightest of misdeeds.
Jingle Bell Heist is as slight narratively as many of its counterparts, but it works and works rather affectingly, because it fills in the wafer-thin story with some rather touching moments of raw humanity.
It’s clear from a number of key scenes that Nick loves and adores his daughter and that he’d do anything for her and that Sophia is only doing the terrible stuff she’s doing because she adores her mum – and if her American accent throws you, that is handily, if conveniently, explained too – and would go to hell and back if it means she has a chance of getting better.
While many of the supporting characters in the movie including Maxwell’s rather pivotal wife Cynthia (Lucy Punch in full world weary mode that manages to be snarlingly disillusioned and sadly vulnerable at once) and Nick’s man-child roommate Ralph (Michael Salami) are one-note characters, though well-etched enough to serve valuable narrative purpose, Nick and Sophia are not, given a lot of character building time which is essential to giving Jingle Bell Heist the surprising emotional heft it possesses.
So well drawn are the two leads that there are times when you genuinely feel an empathetic ache in your heart for what it must be like to be facing losing your daughter because of a pretty stupid life decision – Nick is innocent of all crimes in his name but maybe he should have fought the charges harder? – or to be unable to find the money to fund your mum’s cutting-edge treatment when it could mean you get to keep her around for much longer than her current prognosis would indicate.
The time taken to flesh out Sophia and Nick works a treat, imbuing the low-key robbery shenanigans that follow, which by the way come with some rather delicious twists which will make the heart glad in true seasonal style, with a sense of goodhearted David against an evil Goliath who frankly gets everything coming to him.
With only the slimmest of plots, all this investment in reasonably fully-formed characters who are actually worth caring about not only pays off but is necessary, ensuring that while Jingle Bell Heist is a typical seasonal romcom, that it’s well and truly a cut above the average.
Full of found family moments, some lightly witty back and forth, particularly between but not limited to the two leads who are groundedly adorable, and a plot which deftly balances playfulness and more serious moments, some of which comes with all the feels, Jingle Bell Heist is a worthy addition to the Christmas canon, stealing your heart (see what I did there?) and nourishing the soul which needs to believe that Christmas is a time of healing, restoration and transformation and that now, of all times, happy endings are possible where justice is served, good people get what they deserve and the world shines just a little brighter, if only for a season.