Marathon Viewing 2025's Festive Features: The Good, The Bad and The So-Bad-It's-Good.

It is the season to relax on the sofa and consume a box of festive treats in front of a good movie, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.

Once again, a selection of new seasonal stories aims to become part of our festive viewing—maybe even earning a place alongside beloved favorites like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (don’t start).

So, in a helpful attempt to sort the crackers from the turkeys, and to get into the Christmas spirit, I binged as many fresh festive movies as possible in a single day.

First Up: The Jonas Brothers' Holiday Flick

Beginning, hopefully, on a high. This release is the sole 2025 title on a famous website's list of the best 100 festive features of all time.

The popular band are stuck in the UK after wrapping up their world tour and must make it back for Christmas. Their efforts are thwarted by an malevolent Father Christmas, who bursts into melody to announce they won’t get home until they “rediscover their sibling bond.”

The repartee between the bickering brothers is entertaining even for the uninitiated, while followers will no doubt pick up on lots of easter eggs as they attempt to get back using all transportation available.

It’s a travelogue of mishaps.

It’s not legendary, but is superb for devotees and a solid start to the day.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their family members who will have to sit through it.

Late Morning: Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland appears as a Hollywood star roped into a traditional British stage show.

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “hard-to-work-with” and older action hero Brad Mack, who has fallen on hard times and whose agent has deceived him into thinking he’s performing in renowned British drama.

His pantomime co-stars tell him he’s playing Buttons. “Absolutely not,” he insists angrily. It's easy to predict their retort. Unless you’re not acquainted with traditional stage call-and-response.

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

It’s the kind of movie that would be a bit naff at any other time of year, but is a lot of fun at Christmas.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

A New Spin on Scrooge

Danny Dyer appears at the beginning of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the next movie straight. Might this become a budding festive ritual?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who picks up Mr Sood, the modern take 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 the director of Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative progresses as the miserly Mr Sood is haunted by the ghosts of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This Indian Scrooge is at least unique from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s acting is wooden—a problem when he’s so the main character.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Noon: A BBC Special

Before lunch for a major broadcaster's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a lovably grouchy guy who “isn't big on Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) talks him into splurging the cash on a vacation to Lapland.

There’s just one snag—he discovers there was an mix-up with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to determine how to reimburse the remainder.

Enjoyable but forgettable.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

1.12pm - Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the tree, fairy lights and snow are in the backdrop—Christmas is the environment of the film rather than its core purpose—but it feels cosy and festive all the same.

Ambitious executive Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a vineyard to secure an acquisition for a champagne business. During her travels, she encounters a man in a literary haven who offers to show her a festive Paris.

An expert recently claimed this is the finest new Christmas film of the past few years. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a Christmas romance with a touch of class and gives the required warm and fuzzy feels.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

Mid-Afternoon: Finding Father Christmas

Teenage Chris, played by Lenny Rush, holds onto his belief in Father Christmas, in spite of the persuasion of his dad (starring James Buckley) to tell him otherwise.

The secret is to be discovered, and Chris sets out to find it with the guidance of a group of well-known experts and celebrities.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

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

Pfeiffer opens by name-dropping classic festive films 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 the premise, but in reality it’s really a combination of those inspirations, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last finds her strength.

Festive score: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s gone downhill, but happily here’s a new addition in the crowded field of formulaic, schmaltzy, badly acted—and strangely compelling—festive fodder.

It’s a story as well-worn: An American woman travels to a distant snowy land and ends up finding romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher