Devouring 2025's Festive Features: The Hits, The Misses, and The Guilty Pleasures.

It is the time of year to slob out on the couch and devour a box of mince pies in front of a great film, a bad movie, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

This year, a crop of latest seasonal stories hopes to be part of our festive viewing—maybe even joining the ranks alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

Thus, in a vital public service to separate the winners from the losers, and to find the Christmas spirit, I marathoned as many recent Christmas films as possible in a single day.

7.17am - A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Starting, hopefully, on a high. This release is the exclusive 2025 movie on a popular review site's list of the greatest 100 festive features of all time.

The Jonas Brothers end up stuck in the UK after concluding their world tour and must get home for Christmas. Their endeavors are thwarted by an evil Santa, who sings to state they won’t get home until they “rediscover their brotherly magic.”

The repartee between the bickering brothers is amusing even for the uninitiated, while fans will undoubtedly catch lots of references as they attempt to get back using all transportation available.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

It’s not legendary, but is excellent for fans and a good start to the day.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their loved ones who will have to sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland stars as a Hollywood star roped into a pantomime.

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “temperamental” and aging lead Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose manager has misled him into thinking he’s appearing in prestigious English theatre.

His Aladdin fellow actors tell him he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he insists angrily. You can guess their reply. Unless you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some great jokes, some cockle-warming storylines, and the rest of the cast is excellent, too.

It’s the type of film that would be a bit tacky at another season, but is a highly enjoyable at Christmas.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

Danny Dyer pops up 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 musical taxi operator who encounters Mr Sood, the newest interpretation on Mr Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Mr Sood is played by an actor from Kunal Nayyar and Christmas Karma is directed by the director of Gurinder Chadha. The well-known tale unfolds as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is visited 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 captivating and Nayyar’s performance is wooden—a major flaw when he’s so central to everything.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

12.04pm - Stuffed

Before lunch for a major broadcaster's holiday special—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he gets an large festive windfall at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) talks him into blowing the money on a vacation to Lapland.

There’s just one problem—he finds out there was an mistake with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to devise a plan for how to pay back the excess.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those Christmas films where the festive trappings are in the setting—Christmas is the setting of the film rather than its core purpose—but it feels comfortable and seasonal all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is sent to a vineyard to do a deal for a champagne business. During her travels, she encounters a fellow in a bookshop who vows to show her a festive Paris.

A commentator recently claimed this is the finest new Christmas film of the last several seasons. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a holiday love story with a hint of sophistication and gives the obligatory warm and fuzzy feels.

The scene with a lengthy discussion about Die Hard is notable too.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Young Chris, played by Lenny Rush, refuses to stop believing in Father Christmas, regardless of the efforts of his dad (played by James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.

The secret is to be discovered, and Chris embarks on a quest to find it with the assistance of a team of well-known figures.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother of a quarrelling American family who gather for the holidays—including other acclaimed actress Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, and dad Denis Leary.

Pfeiffer begins by referencing Christmas classics like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before declaring: “They need to make a movie about the real champions of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s what this is, but in execution it’s really a jumble of those inspirations, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last finds her strength.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

Evening: A Scottish Christmas Secret

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

It’s a narrative as old as time: An American woman goes on a quest to a distant snowy land and ends up discovering romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher