Holidate (2020)

2020 104 Minutes

Fed up with being single on holidays, two strangers agree to be each other's platonic plus-ones all year long, only to catch real feelings along the way.

Overall Rating

5 / 10

Verdict: So-So

User Review

d_riptide

3 / 10

Ever seen Friends With Benefits; you know, the romantic comedy featuring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake that played with, or tried to play with the romantic stereotype idea despite adding nothing new to the genre? “Holidate” is something along those very familiar lines but only more weird, more tonally inconsistent and.....it was just dumb.

Random and freakin’ dumb.

Yes, the entire holiday angle with the “friends with benefits” idea is the films entire gimmick but because they’re desperate to cram in every single holiday they can before the movies done, it completely mucks up the pacing, dragging the movie out with scenes that didn’t really need to be in the final cut. Not to mention it set up an entire plethora of other sideplots in the background that could’ve been potentially better ideas than the one we got. A quarter of the movie is funny on purpose, other quarter is funny on accident and the other half just had me completely lost in the shuffle. The Hallmark cheese was at level 50 around the halfway point barring the film’s inconsistency in tone, couldn’t really associate with the characters despite understanding the main central ones, music and editing choices were really weird and what’s the point if you’re going all out with being self-aware in a particular sub-genre if you’re still going to check off almost every cliche from the past 20 years and not even bother to hide it? Not to mention the entire premise that more-or-less affirms the extremely creepy and invasive practice of parents pressuring their children into romantic relationships makes the underlying message of the movie feel, quite frankly.....bizarrely sexist.

Again, I found some of the jokes funny, cinematography didn’t get in the way a lot, I could tell the cast were definitely having a good time with each other, Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey having a buttload of chemistry together respectively. But even though I can appreciate how self-aware is tries to be as all-get out, that isn’t enough to certify a recommendation from me.

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