Marathon Viewing This Year's Festive Features: The Good, The Bad and The So-Bad-It's-Good.

It is the time of year to lounge on the sofa and consume a tin of festive treats in front of a great film, a awful feature, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

This year, a batch of new Christmas films hopes to be part of our holiday traditions—maybe even earning a place alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

Thus, in a helpful attempt to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to find the Christmas spirit, I watched as many recent festive movies as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Beginning, optimistically, on a good foot. This film is the only 2025 movie on a famous website's list of the top 100 festive features of all time.

The musical trio find themselves stuck in the UK after concluding their global concert series and must return for Christmas. Their efforts are thwarted by an evil Santa, who sings to state they won’t get home until they “rediscover their brotherly magic.”

The banter between the squabbling siblings is amusing even for the non-fan, while devotees will certainly notice lots of in-jokes as they endeavor to get back using any means of transport necessary.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

It’s not a timeless masterpiece, but is excellent for devotees and a positive start to the day.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their loved ones who must sit through it.

Next: A Star in Panto

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a movie actor roped into a pantomime.

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and ageing lead Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose agent has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in renowned British drama.

His Aladdin fellow actors tell him he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he insists angrily. One can imagine their retort. That is, unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional stage call-and-response.

There are some very funny lines, some touching storylines, and the rest of the cast is excellent, too.

It’s the kind of movie that would be a bit tacky at any other time of year, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

A familiar face appears at the outset of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the next movie straight. Is this a new Christmas tradition?

This time, he’s a crooning chauffeur who collects Mr Sood, the newest interpretation on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The familiar story develops as the stingy Mr Sood is haunted by the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This South Asian reinterpretation is at least different from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s performance is lifeless—a problem when he’s so central to everything.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

Before lunch for a major broadcaster's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “avoids Christmas.”

But after he gets an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) talks him into spending the sum on a family trip to Lapland.

There’s just one issue—he learns there was an mix-up with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to determine how to return the excess.

Fun while it lasts but not lasting.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

A Classy Netflix Romance

This is one of those holiday movies where the festive trappings are in the backdrop—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its main point—but it feels comfortable and seasonal all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a country estate to secure an acquisition for a sparkling wine company. During her travels, she meets a man in a literary haven who vows to show her the holidays in the City of Light.

An expert recently stated this is the finest new Christmas film of the past few years. That’s a bit of a stretch, but it is a festive dalliance with a hint of sophistication and gives the necessary warm and fuzzy feels.

The scene with a extended debate about Die Hard is notable too.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, in spite of the attempts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

The secret is out there, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the expert help of a group of well-known scientists and personalities.

It’s low-key but charming, and good viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the matriarch of a bickering American family who gather for the holidays—including other Oscar nominee Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping holiday staples like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before saying: “They need to make a movie about the unsung heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s what this is, but in execution it’s really a mash-up of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character eventually takes center stage.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s waned in quality, but happily here’s a new addition in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and utterly watchable—holiday fare.

It’s a story as familiar as can be: An American woman goes on a quest to a distant snowy land and ends up finding romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher