Jump to the good stuff: The Story | Some Thoughts | The Final Verdict
The Story:
Friends and Family Christmas is a lesbian rom com about two women who fake date to appease their parents.
Dani (Humberly González) is an aspiring photographer attending The Brooklyn Artists Lab in New York, where she also works. She’s single, overworked, and unable to go home for Christmas, which upsets her parents (Gabriela Reynoso and Christopher Shyer). While giving her parents the bad news, her father asks if she can meet up with an old college friend’s daughter, Amelia, who recently moved into her neighborhood. Dani fears that her father is trying to set her up on a date, and reluctantly agrees.
Amelia (Ali Liebert) is a corporate lawyer at her father’s law firm who hasn’t dated since her girlfriend broke up with her a year ago. The firm’s holiday party isn’t far off, and her father (Barclay Hope) insists she attend with a date.
Amelia and Dani meet for coffee, exchange glances, introductions, and pleasantries, then leave. It’s obvious that the two women are intrigued by each other but are reluctant to pursue it.
When Amelia gets home, her father calls to ask how things went. Not wanting to upset her father, Amelia tells him that the meeting with Dani was a date and that it went well. She then realizes that she went home with Dani’s gloves by mistake, and contacts Dani to return them. As you can imagine, the two women happily exchange text messages while setting up another meeting.
Meanwhile Dani’s parents are upset that she’s not going to be home for Christmas, so they plan a surprise trip to New York to be with her. The surprise doesn’t go well, but Dani tries her best to fit them into her busy schedule. She loves her parents too much to hurt their feelings.
Dani makes plans to meet Amelia at a coffee shop to get her gloves and tells her parents to meet with her at the same coffee shop half an hour later. Dani’s parents arrive half an hour early and sit with Dani and Amelia. They seem excited to meet Amelia and start talking.
Amelia freaks out because it’s obvious that Dani’s parents think something is going on between them and assumes that her father told Dani’s father that they’re dating. She asks Dani to go outside to explain why she told her father they were seeing each other. Instead of being upset, Dani sees this an opportunity to make her parents happy and keep them off her back while they visit, so Dani asks Amelia if they can be fake girlfriends until Christmas eve. Realizing that agreeing would also keep her father from hounding her about being single, Amelia’s agrees. And so the friends-to-lovers romance beings.
Some Thoughts:
Friends and Family Christmas is a delightful holiday rom com. It has the look and feel of a made for TV movie. The story doesn’t take any chances, delivering a friends-to-lovers plot with little to no tension. What keeps this movie afloat is the chemistry between González and Liebert.
The film does a good job showing Amelia participating and being supportive of Dani, but not the other way around. Some of this is because Dani has a fear of failing as an artist and buries herself in running a silent auction for The Brooklyn Artist Lab to keep from working on her art. However, the lopsided romance does cause a bit of necessary tension, but the drama is never fully played out and the situation gets resolved with little fanfare.
Friends and Family Christmas would do well with an evil character working against the couple. I thought Kylie (Samantha Cole), an aspiring author and poet, was going to be that villain. When she first arrives, she seems smitten with Dani, so I was hopeful. Nothing comes of it. Instead, they use Kylie to make small talk with Amelia and mention that she dated her ex, which opens old wounds.
Although Friends and Family Christmas is enjoyable, I was never fully invested in the characters. The stakes didn’t feel high, and imminent doom wasn’t around the corner. And because of that, the end came with little emotional impact.
The Final Verdict:
Friends and Family Christmas is a decent holiday romance. There are no high or low moments, and the end doesn’t pack a punch, but it will hold your interest.