Marathon Viewing 2025's Festive Features: Highlights, Lowlights, and Unexpected Delights.

It is the season to slob out on the couch and devour a packet of mince pies in front of a good movie, a awful feature, or one that’s terrible yet terrific.

This year, a crop of new seasonal stories strives to join part of our seasonal watchlist—perhaps even finding a spot alongside timeless staples like Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, and Die Hard (we won’t debate it).

Thus, in a noble effort to distinguish the gems from the coal, and to embrace the festive feeling, I marathoned as many fresh holiday releases as possible in a single day.

Early Morning: A Very Jonas Christmas Movie

Beginning, optimistically, on a positive note. This is the sole 2025 entry on a popular review site's list of the top 100 festive features of all time.

The musical trio end up trapped in the UK after wrapping up their global concert series and must get home for Christmas. Their attempts are hampered by an evil Santa, who bursts into melody to announce they won’t get home until they “find their familial spark.”

The back-and-forth between the bickering brothers is amusing even for the uninitiated, while devotees will no doubt pick up on lots of references as they attempt to get back using every mode of travel possible.

It’s a journey of epic proportions.

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

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 for Jonas Brothers fans or 🎄🎄🎄 for their relatives who must sit through it.

8.45am - Tinsel Town

Famous performer Kiefer Sutherland has been cast as a Hollywood star roped into a pantomime.

“A panto-what??” asks Sutherland’s “difficult” and aging action hero Brad Mack, who has seen better days and whose agent has deceived him into thinking he’s appearing in high-class London stage.

His Aladdin co-stars let him know he’s playing Buttons. “No I'm not,” he insists angrily. You can guess their response. Unless you’re not acquainted with traditional stage call-and-response.

There are some hilarious moments, some touching storylines, and the rest of the cast is brilliant, too.

It’s the sort of feature that would be a bit tacky at a different time, but is a lot of fun at Christmas.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄🎄

10.19am - Christmas Karma

Danny Dyer pops up at the start of this film, too, insulting someone for the second film in a row. Is this a budding festive ritual?

This time, he’s a singing black cab driver who collects Mr Sood, the newest interpretation 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 filmmaker behind Gurinder Chadha. The classic narrative develops as the stingy 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 different from all the others, but regrettably he’s not very charismatic and Nayyar’s portrayal is flat—a significant issue when he’s so central to everything.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Lunchtime: Stuffed

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

But after he receives an sizable holiday payout at work, his wife (played by Morgana Robinson) talks him into 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 devise a plan for how to reimburse the difference.

Fun while it lasts but not lasting.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Early Afternoon: Champagne Problems

This is one of those holiday movies where the festive trappings are in the backdrop—Christmas is the scene of the film rather than its core purpose—but it feels warm and holiday-like all the same.

High-powered businesswoman Sydney (played by Minka Kelly) is sent to a country estate to do a deal for a sparkling wine company. On the way, she runs into a fellow in a literary haven who offers to show her Christmas in Paris.

An expert recently stated this is the finest new Christmas film of the recent era. That’s a bit of a overstatement, but it is a festive dalliance with a dash of elegance and gives the obligatory warm and fuzzy feels.

The scene with a detailed conversation about Die Hard is particularly strong too.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄🎄

A Charming Quest

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

The answer is somewhere, and Chris sets out to find it with the expert help of a group of well-known figures.

It’s gentle but charming, and perfect viewing while waiting for Santa to visit.

Festive score: 🎄🎄🎄

Late Afternoon: Oh. What. Fun.

Michelle Pfeiffer is the mother 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 opens by name-dropping classic festive films like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life and Home Alone, before saying: “They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays—moms.”

So that’s the premise, but in execution it’s really a jumble of those forerunner films, at least until Pfeiffer’s character at last finds her strength.

Christmas tree rating: 🎄🎄

Evening: A Scottish Christmas Secret

The day’s taken a dip, but fortunately here’s a new entry in the crowded field of cliched, saccharine, over-the-top—and highly entertaining—seasonal comfort food.

It’s a tale 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