Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
‘Jingle Bell Heist’ is on Netflix.
Two strangers, united by a twist of fate, set out to rob a multi-millionaire’s store, only to steal each other’s hearts. Eeks. Okay, now that I’ve written that sentence, I realize it sounds incredibly cheesy. But then again, Christmas drama ‘Jingle Bell Heist’ happily lives in cheesy-romance territory, so at least we’re all on theme.
Directed by Michael Fimognari (To All The Boys: Always and Forever, Midnight Club), ‘Jingle Bell Heist’ stars Olivia Holt as Sophia, a department store worker forced to team up with Nick (Connor Swindells), a contractor, to steal jewels and cash. Sophia is burdened with mounting medical bills for her mother’s cancer treatment, while Nick is motivated by a mix of vengeance and greed as he targets a specific store.
Branded as a Christmas “romantic comedy,” precious little is funny about ‘Jingle Bell Heist’, and neither is there any watchable chemistry between the lead characters, Sophia and Nick. They’re both saddled with sappy backstories to explain why they’re being bad kids on Christmas, when the movie could have easily lightened the tone by giving at least one of them a less serious reason to pull off a holiday heist.
Olivia Holt is quite charming as Sophia, a young working woman skilled in sleight of hand, but Connor Swindells has very little ‘main character energy’ as Nick. Rather than developing real chemistry between the two characters, the film leans on a convenient emotional device to sell Nick’s appeal, making the romance feel forced.
Peter Serafinowicz stars as Maxwell Sterling, the millionaire whose department store Sophia and Nick set their sights on, while Lucy Punch plays his wife, Cynthia Sterling, a woman with a famously wandering eye. Their plan conveniently involves winning Cynthia over so she’ll hand Nick access to something crucial needed for breaking into the store. It’s a wildly implausible gambit that leans heavily on Nick’s barely-there charm and ends up feeling more laughable than believable.
I started watching ‘Jingle Bell Heist’ with a friend, and both of us began losing interest about 20 minutes in. While my friend didn’t bother finishing it at all, I at least went back a few days later to find out what happened and ended up watching the entire film. Maybe the friend made a better decision.
To be fair, the colorful, sparkly, Christmas themed visuals in the movie definitely have their appeal. However, the plot relies on convenient twists to deliver a pretty bland and forgettable holiday story.
Rating: 4 on 10. You can stream ‘Jingle Bell Heist’ on Netflix.
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