What does Netflix’s Meet Me Next Christmas want to be? My guess is that this new release was originally written as a straight romantic comedy, but it feels like some Netflix executive came in and said “Rom-coms are fine, but we also want to make a holiday movie featuring the Christmas songs of Pentatonix, how can we shoehorn these ideas together?” The end result is a clumsy romance between Christina Milian and Devale Ellis that shares the stage with a Pentatonix holiday concert, but would have ultimately been served better if it was simply one or the other.
Opening Shot: It’s Christmas in Chicago; snow falls on the skyscrapers, an L train bustles on its track with – hold up, is that Santa and his sleigh being pulled on one of the cars? – and billboards and TVs across the city glow while broadcasting a performance from Pentatonix as they sing “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.” A woman at O’Hare Airport stops to watch, but gets distracted when she sees that her flight has been cancelled.
The Gist: Christina Milian plays Layla, a woman who is in a committed relationship with a man named Tanner (Brendan Morgan). The two are long-term partners with an annual tradition of attending the big Pentatonix Christmas concert in New York on Christmas Eve. But when the movie begins, Layla gets stranded in Chicago while on a business trip and is unable to make it to that year’s concert. While she’s hanging out in the airport lounge waiting for her flight home to New York, she meets a handsome stranger named James (Kofi Siroboe), and she laments that she’s missing the Pentatonix show, and he’s all, “Who’s Pentatonix?” and so she’s all “‘Who’s Pentatonix??'” and makes him listen to the a cappella group on her earbuds.
James is clearly smitten with Layla and, let’s be clear, Layla is flirting HARD with James. To the point where I actually scrubbed back to the beginning of the movie to make sure I didn’t miss the part where Layla called Tanner her brother or something. Straight off the bat, the movie positions her as having a boyfriend, but then also immediately being attracted to James. James tells her as he gets up to board his flight that he’s into her, and if she happens to be single a year from now, they should meet up at, you guessed it, the Christmas Pentatonix concert in New York. I am confounded by the choices of this film. Layla tells James she’s not planning to leave her boyfriend, but he insists that just in case they both happen to be single next Christmas, they should find each other at that concert to reunite.
Cut to next Christmas… and Layla finds Tanner in flagrante with another woman. RIGHT BEFORE THE PENTATONIX SHOW! She throws his cheating ass out, and makes a plan to find James at the show that’s only a few days away. The problem is that she doesn’t have tickets and the show is sold out. [Author’s note: I am truly drunk and I’ve only been playing the “Sip every time someone says ‘Pentatonix'” drinking game for ten minutes.]
After checking every ticket site and online reseller with no luck, Layla hires a concierge named Teddy (Devale Ellis) who can supposedly help her get anything she needs. Time and again they lose out on tickets, until Teddy starts to DM the Pentatonix’ manager who becomes invested in Layla’s love journey to meet up with James. But as the days pass and Layla and Teddy work together to find tickets, they find themselves falling for each other.
On the night of the concert, with the help of Pentatonix themselves, the Teddy and Layla meet at the show where Teddy gets onstage to profess his love for Layla who, of course, feels the same. (Oh, and Layla does see James at the concert but, without letting him speak, she frantically apologizes to him while explaining that she’s in love with someone new. Which is fine, because James wasn’t even there waiting for her, he was waiting for his new girlfriend.)
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The gist, two semi-strangers who make a plan to meet in New York on a major holiday, is very Sleepless in Seattle. Except here, the Empire State Building is played by an a cappella group, and the couple initially positioned to get together actually doesn’t.
Our Take: Pentatonix is the best thing about this movie about Pentatonix. As it should be. The singing group, playing an exaggerated version of themselves, have assumed over-the-top celebrity alter egos, a trope that works here because they don’t seem to be taking themselves seriously at all. And when they spontaneously and harmoniously break into song to complete each other’s sentences or answer questions, it’s genuinely funny. Unfortunately, they only have about ten minutes of screen time, and the rest of the film is a madcap adventure of a grown woman obsessively trying to get tickets for a Pentatonix show that’s, at best, silly, and at worst, absolute nonsense. And the only good thing about the Layla storyline in this film is the genuine chemistry she has with James, who is completely absent from the film for most of the film, because eventually she realizes she’s in love with Teddy.
While I understand that this is meant to be a Christina Milian vehicle more than a Pentatonix vehicle (Milian is an executive producer and does have a music number of her own in the film), I can’t help but feel that the film would have been much stronger if Pentatonix were the focal point and we just went full Spice World, allowing them to really lean into their goofy personas and go on the madcap adventure that culminates in their big performance. Because they’re legit funny. Instead, Milian and Ellis, who are only just fine, endure a bunch of mildly amusing situations while also slowly falling for one another. Unfortunately their own chemistry is nowhere near as strong as Milian’s chemistry with Sirfoboe, who plays James. As a rom-com, the romance just doesn’t click. As a holiday musical, there’s not enough of it.
Sex and Skin: Tanner is briefly undressed from the waist up when Layla discovers him in bed with another woman, but the film is rated PG and there’s nothing more salacious than that.
Parting Shot: Layla and Teddy kiss at the Pentatonix concert as the camera fades out.
Performance Worth Watching: Nikki Duval plays Pentatonix long-suffering manager who has to endure them singing most of their conversations and making insane, outlandish celebrity requests. Her eye-rolly performance as a woman who is over her clients is funny because it’s the only acknowledgment within the film that all of this Pentatonix obsession is kind of ridiculous.
Memorable Dialogue: “I’m on four standby lists so trust me, I’m going to make it home on time for the Pentatonix show,” Layla tells Tanner after learning her flight from Chicago to New York has been cancelled. Moments later, after meeting James in an airport lounge, she makes him listen to Pentatonix for his first time, and he tells her as he gets up to board his flight, “You just put me on to Pentatonix!” At no point in the script-writing process did anyone stop to wonder if any character was saying “Pentatonix” too much.
Our Call: You can safely Pentato-NIX this one from your viewing list. Tell this film to BEAT(box) it! Okay, just SKIP IT.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.