Stream It or Skip It: ‘Father Christmas Is Back’ on Netflix, Where Kelsey Grammer Plays a Bad Dad to an Even Worse Family

Netflix’s holiday season continues with the debut of Father Christmas Is Back, a UK comedy with a stacked cast. Kelsey Grammer! Elizabeth Hurley! John Cleese! That nerdy, horny Brit from Love, Actually! This movie has some major star power, so it has to be a smashing success… right? Right…?

FATHER CHRISTMAS IS BACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Uptight Caroline Christmas-Hope (Nathalie Cox) just wants a picture perfect holiday with her large, highly dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, the Christmas family consists of Caroline’s well-meaning but dopey husband Peter Hope (Kris Marshall), her sisters—cutthroat fashion editor Joanna Christmas (Elizabeth Burley), bad girl Vicky Christmas (Talulah Riley), and Beatles-obsessed grad student Paulina Christmas (Naomi Frederick)—and her possibly too laid back mom Elizabeth Christmas (Caroline Quentin). Mom’s hooking up with Uncle John Christmas (John Cleese) because dad—Kelsey Grammer’s James Christmas—abandoned the family on Christmas Day 27 years ago. But pay that trauma no mind, because this is the year that Caroline reclaims Christmas!

And then, without warning, father Christmas comes back and throws everything off track—not that the holiday was ever on track. This family can do chaotic without Kelsey Grammer’s help.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Father Christmas Is Back feels like it wants to be a Family Stone/Love the Coopers style big holiday melodramedy. It ends up feeling more like your least favorite Love, Actually plot filtered through the last half hour of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation—y’know, when a cat gets electrocuted and Clark tries to bash a squirrel’s brains in.

Performance Worth Watching: The movie wants us to laugh at estranged father Christmas’s hot, young, American girlfriend Jackie, but April Bowlby’s wide-eyed earnestness makes that impossible. Jackie is sweet, well-intentioned, and one of the only likable characters in the movie. Jackie’s also the exact opposite of Bowlby’s role on HBO Max’s super weird superhero show Doom Patrol—and it’s great to see her range!

Memorable Dialogue: Caroline delivers this crucial exposition early on: “I’ve had 27 years of therapy trying to recalibrate Christmas ever since our shit-head of a father abandoned us on Christmas Day.”

A Holiday Tradition: The Christmases cannot miss the annual Christmas fair in Howden, and—this being a UK Christmas comedy—you bet there’s a Nativity play.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: It makes so much sense that it’s distracting! I did a double take when they first addressed Caroline as Caroline Christmas-Hope. What a name!

Our Take: Father Christmas Is Back truly captures the feeling of spending the holidays with a bunch of family members who can’t stop bickering, where damning things are said that can’t be taken back, and where every well-intentioned plan gets ripped to shreds. That probably doesn’t sound like a holiday you want to experience or dwell on, and it’s probably not one you’d want to spend two hours of your holiday time watching on Netflix.

Every character in Father Christmas Is Back ranges from unlikeable (Joanna’s hatred of children—her niece and nephew included!—is some real Disney villain stuff) to outright baffling (Paulina’s entire character, from wardrobe to dialogue, consists of nonstop Beatles references). There are no character arcs, no apologies, none of the heart-to-hearts that are so essential to this genre. Sometimes the actors come close to making their bad deeds seem like good fun. Hurley, whose Joanna enters the film dressed in a look that serves high-fashion Yeti/Elvis realness, seems to be having a blast with this role. But those moments, like almost all of the film, are underscored with a painfully awkward score as well as, in some instances, Looney Tunes sound effects.

What’s wild is that as soon as Grammer’s deadbeat dad and Bowlby’s future trophy wife arrive, your sympathies land on them even though they’re clearly intended to be the antagonists. Granted, there is a reason why Grammer’s character isn’t portrayed as an outright villain from the top (believe it or not, this movie goes for a happy ending), but there isn’t even an attempt at a misdirect. The majority of this movie plays out like this nice couple from America being harassed by the worst family in England.

Father Christmas Is Back has a solid ensemble that really deserved a better script as well as way better lighting. If your Christmas was actually like this one, you’d find yourself taking very long drives in your rental car multiple times a day. Since it’s a Netflix movie, you can just turn it off.

Our Call: SKIP IT. This movie is the anti Love, Actually.

Stream Father Christmas Is Back on Netflix