Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. I’ve got 99 problems, but… champagne isn’t one.

What are we even doing anymore? In one of my recent posts about TV shows, I broke down an episode of Emily In Paris, because Netflix has an entire division devoted to content where they send mostly white girls, but single females to have some random romp in Europe. It is actually surprising that they didn’t go forwar with Too Much’s second season because it is so on brand for them. Emily In Paris is in Season 5, and she’s not even in Paris. She’s in Rome. Or how about the film we got earlier this year, The Wrong Paris? That was Netflix. Jingle Bell Heist features an American girl in England. they are cornering the market on this very specific type of show. it isn’t that other streamers don’t do this, but not with the regularity of netflix. One day, I expect to see a row that just says “Girl Somewhere In Europe”. But, probably Paris.

Minka Kelly is the newest girl to get sent to the city of love. She’s got this threadbare plot where she works for a company that is paying to send her to Paris at Christmas to land this deal with a winery, and acquire the brand. of course, she will meet a local hot guy who speaks her language well enough to sound super sexy with that accent, but also be able to slip into French when needed. he’s not who she thinks he is, and you’ve seen this film before. it goes exactly where you think it will.

But, why is this a Christmas movie? Why bother at all? She goes over on Christmas Eve, and they spend maybe a few minutes enjoying the holiday, before the plot needs to move forward and the holiday never mattered.She doesn’t even put up a fight about having to travel for the holidays. she’s unencumbered, and if she wasn’t flying to Paris, she’d likely be the person sitting at home on Christmas Eve watching a netflix movie about some girl who goes to Europe and has a torrid love affair that is still tame and somehow PG-13.

Can we change this formula a bit? Just a little? Can we send some more girls that aren’t white, or aren’t even young. Kelly is 45, so, I guess she qualifies as a midlife crisis? But, there are other pretty places other than Paris. Barcelona? Vienna? At a certain point, the cut, paste, repeat is hard to ignore. Like, it is hard to not realize this could have just been an abandoned plot from Emily In Paris, altered a bit and made feature length. She’s constantly courting brands, so having to be in a silly situation where she has chemistry with this guy, while also trying to sign a deal with this vineyard is so Emily In Paris that I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened in Season 1 and I just forgot.

there’s audio description, and its perfectly fine. There is a bit of French, so that helps, but the whole thing is silly. There’s a scene where Hot French Guy talks to her in French, which she doesn’t speak, but she responds to him like she understood him based on an old lady giving her a thumbs up? But, at least we get the translation in the description. for all she knows, he just told her he has chlamydia.

Netflix’s thing is sending girls to Europe to fall in love, and they’ve done it so frequently, the films are starting to blur together, and they aren’t even trying to showcase different European destinations. Who will be in Paris next week?

Rotten: 5.3/10