A Merry Little Ex-Mas Review
Director: Steve Carr
Date Created: 2025-11-12 21:51
2.5
A Merry Little Ex-Mas Review: Directed by Steve Carr and written by Holly Hester, this movie is Netflix’s latest attempt to bring some festive warmth to our screens this holiday season. The film stars Alicia Silverstone, Oliver Hudson, Jameela Jamil, Pierson Fodé, Linda Kash, and Melissa Joan Hart and clocks in at a cosy 91 minutes. The story follows the separated couple Kate and Everett as they decide to spend one last Christmas together with the kids before officially moving on with their lives. But, naturally, for any Christmas rom-com, things hardly go according to plan, especially when Everett’s new girlfriend arrives uninvited and turns their “perfect” family holiday into a snowstorm of awkwardness.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas Review
To be honest, holiday movies are my guilty pleasure. Even when every twist is obvious and every romance is a bit ludicrous, I enjoy sitting down and watching it, so seeing the trailer for Netflix’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas made me excited, as it looked cosy, the kind of stuff you can half-watch while drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and still enjoy. I took one look at the cast, namely Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson, and hoped this holiday tale might have some life to it. But after seeing the movie in its entirety, it felt like I had opened up a gift box, only to find the box was filled mostly with gift wrapping.
With the idea of “dysfunctional Christmas” as the sentimental hook, they work the story like a balance beam, trying to land the emotional tension of a divorced couple coming together under the same roof on a night meant to be merry and bright, with the more usual expectations of a holiday movie. The film also sometimes wants to be serious and earnest about how a family attempts to remain close, despite their physically separated lives.
However, right before you can let yourself experience that emotion, it cuts to some goofy scene or half-ass joke that ruins the moment. The tone never lands, and that unevenness spreads across the movie. The film seems like it wants to say something profound about love and family, but is too afraid to linger and bask in those feelings.
But what kept me from being completely impatient was Alicia Silverstone. She plays Kate with a kind of calm exhaustion that feels believable. You can see in her eyes that she is losing the battle to keep it all together — her family, her mind, the Christmas dinner. Even when the script all but puts Kate in the back row, Silverstone has you rooting for her. Those reactions, the silence, the stumbling awkwardness of trying to be upbeat all feel real. And it merits a more interesting tale around it.
Oliver Hudson as Everett, the ex-husband, who doesn’t seem to know what he wants. The character feels two-dimensional, and it’s hard to understand his motivations most of the time. He is meant to be a man in the middle of an emotional struggle, but more often comes across as a guy who accidentally attended the wrong Christmas party.
Jameela Jamil as his new girlfriend, Tess, and she’s surprisingly fun. Now she could have easily fallen into the trope of the “villain” of the story, but she is written as caring and considerate, a complexity that nature is clumsy enough to weave in and out of the narrative. In a Christmas movie that has no idea what to do with a new partner, at least it doesn’t make the new partner unnecessarily horrible.
Pierson Fodé as Ched, Kate’s possible love interest, gets some fun energy but largely feels like he just wandered in from another film. He is one of those good-mood people, gliding on the ice, cracking jokes, representing the sunny antithesis of Kate’s always-stressed-out self. His character provides comic relief, though his relationship with Kate never feels quite realised. The chemistry is cutesy and light, but leads nowhere you can remember.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas movie delivers visually what you may expect out of a Christmas-filled Netflix movie. The snow is all fluffy, the houses twinkle with a million fairy lights, and it is all postcard-y in this blasted small town. even if the story itself never reaches that same warmth. It is aesthetically pleasing to look at, propelled by its cinematography and set design, but when you look beyond the set pieces and peeling fake wallpaper, the film becomes suffocatingly hollow.
The writing is where the movie truly struggles. There is something very pretentious in the dialogue; they feel unnatural, but they try too hard to be deep. It all hints at intriguing themes like how parents cope with separation over the holidays, how people redefine family post-divorce, but the film never addresses them adequately. Every emotional build-up ends too soon, replaced by another predictable scene or joke. When the film gets to the conclusion, though, you can see it from a mile away. The ending comes far too quickly and undeservedly, and when the credits roll, there is little to cling to.
Still, there are a few bright spots. The Netflix movie A Merry Little Ex-Mas has a pleasant pace and never drags, and there are moments of authentic sweetness between Kate and her children that feel earnest and well-earned. The humour is hit and miss, but when it lands, it does add some lightness to the film. And while it is easy to see where this yarn ends up, its straightforwardness has a kind of mild reassurance to it, like rewatching a Christmas movie you know won’t surprise you but will at least keep you company.
Netflix A Merry Little Ex-Mas Review: Summing Up
All in all, A Merry Little Ex-Mas is definitely the type of movie that sounds good in theory, more so than in execution. It aims to blend humour with heartbreak and hope, but never quite lands it. The emotional beats lack punch, and the romantic ones come off as unconvincing. Overall, it is a watchable, occasionally funny and visually charming movie, just do not be surprised if you forget about it a while later. It’s a film that dives in with promise but quickly drifts to mediocrity, leaving behind a curriculum vitae smile rather than a gold star impression.
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