Marathon Viewing 2025's Holiday Movies: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to lounge on the couch and demolish a tin of festive treats in front of a great film, a awful feature, or one that’s so bad it’s good.

Once again, a batch of fresh Christmas films hopes to be part of our festive viewing—potentially even finding a spot alongside timeless staples 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 embrace the Christmas spirit, I marathoned as many new festive movies as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Beginning, ideally, on a positive note. This film is the sole 2025 entry on a famous website's list of the greatest 100 festive features of all time.

The Jonas Brothers are stranded in the UK after concluding their international trek and must get home for Christmas. Their efforts are hindered by an villainous Saint Nick, who breaks into song to declare they won’t get home until they “rekindle their brotherly magic.”

The back-and-forth between the bickering brothers is entertaining even for the non-fan, while fans will undoubtedly pick up on lots of in-jokes as they attempt to get back using any means of transport necessary.

It’s private planes, trains and automobiles.

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

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their loved ones who must sit through it.

Late Morning: Tinsel Town

A-list actor Kiefer Sutherland appears as a movie actor tricked into a "panto".

“A panto-what?” asks Sutherland’s “difficult” and older lead Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose manager has tricked him into thinking he’s performing in prestigious English theatre.

His Aladdin cast-mates let him know he’s playing Buttons. “Oh no I’m not,” he retorts. It's easy to predict their response. Except if you’re unfamiliar with traditional panto catchphrases.

There are some very funny lines, some touching side stories, and the supporting actors is brilliant, too.

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

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

A familiar face shows up at the beginning of this film, too, delivering a signature line for the second film in a row. Might this become a budding festive ritual?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who collects 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 Bend It Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha. The well-known tale develops as the tight-fisted Mr Sood is confronted by the spirits of Christmas yesterday, today, and tomorrow, played by Hugh Bonneville, Billy Porter, and Boy George.

This cultural adaptation is at least distinct from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very captivating and Nayyar’s portrayal is wooden—a problem when he’s so the main character.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

There’s time for a channel's original festive film—which stars Guz Khan as a charmingly cantankerous character who “doesn’t really do Christmas.”

But after he is awarded an £8,000 Christmas bonus at work, his wife (portrayed by Morgana Robinson) persuades him blowing the money on a family trip to Lapland.

There’s just one problem—he learns there was an error with his bonus, which should have been £800, and he has to figure out how to reimburse the excess.

Pleasant yet unmemorable.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

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

Ambitious executive Sydney (starring Minka Kelly) is dispatched to a country estate to negotiate a purchase for a champagne business. During her travels, she encounters a man in a book store who vows to show her a festive Paris.

A critic recently declared this is the top new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a exaggeration, but it is a festive dalliance with a touch of class and gives the necessary warm and fuzzy feels.

The scene with a detailed conversation about Die Hard is very good too.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

3.29pm - Finding Father Christmas

Teenage Chris, played by Lenny Rush, continues to believe in Father Christmas, regardless of the attempts of his dad (starring James Buckley) to tell him the reality.

The truth is out there, and Chris ventures forth to find it with the expert help of a team of well-known scientists and personalities.

It’s gentle but sweet, and good viewing while expecting Santa to visit.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

4.39pm - Oh. What. Fun.

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

Pfeiffer begins by referencing holiday staples like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before stating: “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 forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last finds her strength.

Holiday verdict: 🎄🎄

6.43pm - A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s gone downhill, but fortunately here’s a new offering in the packed genre of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and strangely compelling—festive fodder.

It’s a tale as familiar as can be: An American woman travels to a far-off wintery locale and ends up stumbling across romance.

In this case, Caprice Bourret plays a publisher