Holidate

“For all there is to criticize, Holidate does surprise us by presenting a relationship with an age gap in a positive way.”

Title: Holidate (2020)
Director: John Whitesell 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Tiffany Paulsen 👩🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Alicja Johnson 👩🏼🇺🇸

Technical: 2/5

Many people despise the holiday season for one reason or another. For Sloane (Emma Roberts), co-lead in the Netflix Original film Holidate, the most “wonderful time of the year” brings family gatherings where her single status is the only topic of conversation. After a particularly difficult Christmas, she happens to meet Jackson (Luke Bracey) at the mall, who is recovering from his own dumpster fire of a celebration. While bonding over their shared disdain for the holidays, they decide to become each other’s “holidates,” or platonic plus-ones for every special occasion of the year.

As with most romantic comedies, we know the leads in Holidate will end up together. Unfortunately, writer Tiffany Paulsen’s screenplay makes the journey a drag. Paulsen does pull off some funny gags here and there, but hollow characters and a plot reliant on coincidences and cliches work to disengage viewers.

The film’s one bright spot comes in the form of Kristin Chenoweth playing Sloane’s Aunt Susan, a serial holidater who introduces her niece to the concept. As the inspiration for Sloane and Jackson’s holidate arrangement (holidarrangement?), Susan pops up from time to time at various gatherings, always with a different man. Chenoweth clearly has so much fun with her performance, sprinkling her scenes with infectious cheer.

Gender: 2/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

From idealizing heteronormativity to romanticizing creepy (and sometimes violent) male behavior, rom-coms don’t have the best track record for their depictions of women and love. Furthermore, they often perpetuate the notion that women need romantic relationships to find fulfillment in life. Holidate completely fails to break from these harmful messages.

For one thing, although Sloane is one of the two main characters, we learn almost nothing about her outside of her love life. The screenplay reveals that Jackson plays golf professionally, but we only know that Sloane works remotely (and who doesn’t these days?). Given that characters around Sloane imply that she works too much, it feels strange seeing so little about her actual career.

I suspect Paulsen wanted to subvert genre norms, as the film’s dialogue often pokes fun at unrealistic rom-com cliches. Yet these self-aware references are undercut by how the plot plays right into the very same tropes. Sloane herself is a composite of tired stereotypes like the career woman and the “new old maid.” It doesn’t help that all characters in the film—especially her family members—only want to talk about why Sloane is single.

Holidate also centers the egregious “not like the other girls” trope. Early on, Jackson and Sloane gripe about their past relationship troubles by generalizing about the opposite sex, with Jackson going on a particularly misogynist bender about how women go “mental” during the holidays. So when he ends up with Sloane, the unspoken assumption is that she must be the exception to Jackson’s sexist rule.

The movie doesn’t necessarily have a mustache-twirling antagonist, but it sure does villainize Sloane’s mother (Frances Fisher). Elaine is practically cartoonish in her obsession with Sloane’s love life, discussing nothing else with her daughter. Even when chastising Sloane about smoking cigarettes, she worries less about Sloane’s health and more that men don’t find smokers attractive. Holidate makes no effort to humanize her, nor allow her any sort of reconciliation with her daughter.

The supporting female characters don’t fare any better. Despite the many conversations that occur between women, the movie only passes the Bechdel Test a few times. If Sloane’s friends and relatives aren’t talking about her love life, they’re talking about their own straight relationships, meaning that life in Holidate revolves around the male prospects in their lives.

Race: 3/5

As a film set in Chicago, Holidate sorely lacks meaningful diversity. Aside from Scruffy Santa (Carl McDowell), the first of Aunt Susan’s holidates, characters of color tend to serve as sounding boards for the two white leads. Jackson’s best friend and fellow golfer Neil, played by Black Canadian-American actor Andrew Bachelor, is a prime example. Paulsen shoehorns in a small subplot for him toward the end of the film, but his primary function seems to be complaining about women with Jackson.

Part of me wants to give the film credit for bestowing Faarooq, played by Manish Dayal who was born to Indian Gujarati parents, with an impressive career as a doctor. The other part of me worries that it perpetuates the stereotype of Asian Americans working in STEM fields (but never in leadership roles). Like many of Holidate’s other characters, Faarooq is simply too underdeveloped to make a meaningful judgment call about whether or not he’s being typecast into the harmful model minority myth.

Lastly, the film paints Sloane’s future sister-in-law Liz in a rather unflattering light. Played by Vietnamese American actor Cynthy Wu, Liz gets engaged to Sloane’s brother after three months of dating—then belatedly realizes she barely knows anything about her partner. Though likely intended to be a subplot, her character’s choices and dialogue make Liz come off as silly and naive.

Bonus for Age: +0.25

For all there is to criticize, Paulsen does surprise us by presenting a relationship with an age gap in a positive way. Aunt Susan falls for Faarooq, the young doctor that Sloane’s mother constantly tries to set up with her daughter. When pairing 37-year-old Dayal with Chenoweth, who is 52, Holidate easily could have played the generational difference with tacky cougar jokes. Fortunately, Paulsen allows them to simply exist like any other happy couple.

Mediaversity Grade: D 2.42/5

A flimsy script and careless representation make watching Holidate an absolute chore. Viewers seeking holiday cheer will want to look elsewhere.

Like Holidate? Try these other wintry titles.

Grade: DLiNovember 12, 2020Female/Nonbinary Creator