Another Forgettable Festive Offering from Netflix
As the temperature drops and daylight hours shorten, Netflix has once again launched its annual barrage of Christmas content, though Champagne Problems arrives too early in the season to feel genuinely festive. The streaming giant's latest romantic comedy, starring Minka Kelly and Tom Wozniczka, joins a growing catalogue of holiday films that prioritise quantity over quality, delivering predictable storylines with all the lasting impact of cheap bubbly.
A By-the-Numbers Christmas Romance
The film follows Sydney Price (Minka Kelly), a career-driven private equity executive whose life revolves around work. When her boss sends her to France to acquire a legacy champagne brand over the Christmas period, her sister makes her promise to experience at least one night of Parisian magic. This leads to a meet-cute with Henri Cassell (Tom Wozniczka) in an impossibly quaint bookstore, where he literally wrestles her phone from her hands.
The plot unfolds with mechanical precision: Sydney initially resists Henri's charms for vague professional reasons, only to discover he's the reluctant heir to the very champagne house she's been sent to acquire. Chateau Cassel, the family vineyard, becomes the battleground for their conflicting worldviews - Henri's sentimental attachment versus Sydney's corporate acquisition strategy.
Lacking Chemistry and Originality
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson, whose previous Netflix romance Love in the Villa proved equally forgettable, Champagne Problems suffers from fundamental flaws in execution. The chemistry between the two leads fails to ignite, with Kelly delivering a serviceable but superficial performance as the career woman discovering there's more to life than work. Wozniczka provides the required dose of French charm but little depth beyond surface-level appeal.
The supporting cast includes Thibault de Montalembert as Henri's father Hugo and Xavier Samuel as Sydney's scheming colleague Ryan, who ironically shares more believable chemistry with Kelly in their limited scenes together than the supposed romantic leads manage throughout the entire film.
Visually, the film relies on unconvincing CGI snow and picture-postcard Parisian settings that feel more like stock footage than lived-in environments. The humour falls flat, the emotional beats feel unearned, and the ultimate resolution follows the predictable rom-com blueprint without adding anything new to the genre.
As the review notes, this is the very definition of a champagne problem - a minor complaint in the grand scheme, but nevertheless disappointing for viewers seeking genuine festive cheer rather than algorithmic content creation.
