The holidays and romance go together like marshmallows and cocoa. In more traditional romance films, a Christmas setting can bring estranged characters together and provide a ticking countdown to up the stakes. For holiday-forward fare, a romantic plot can add an extra dose of sweetness and elevate a genre that is often relegated to children or family fun. Over the last two decades, hundreds of lower-budget holiday romance films have also proliferated on Hallmark, Lifetime and Netflix, offering a never-ending platter of new seasonal indulgences.
Whether you’re in the mood to curl up with an acclaimed classic or a chemistry-filled distraction, we’ve narrowed down a list of some of the best wintry love stories to watch from your couch.
‘While You Were Sleeping’ (1995)
Lucy (Sandra Bullock), a lonely Chicago train station worker, rescues a handsome stranger (Peter Gallagher) after he is pushed onto the El tracks. As the man is recovering in the hospital, Lucy allows his family to believe that she’s his fiancée. But as the family takes her under its wing for the holidays, she begins to fall for her fake fiancé’s charming brother (Bill Pullman), who could actually be her soul mate. It’s the perfect screwball setup, anchored by an extremely moving performance by Bullock. Though the film was originally released in April, Pullman has said “without being cloyingly about Christmas, it’s just enough to make sense.”
‘The Shop Around the Corner’ (1940)
Before Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan exchanged emails on the Upper West Side, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan swapped handwritten letters in Budapest. “The Shop Around the Corner” (based on the Hungarian play “Parfumerie”) follows two gift shop employees who loathe each other in person but are unwittingly falling in love as anonymous pen pals. Touching on themes of loneliness and the immense pressures of working in holiday retail, Ernst Lubitsch’s rom-com strikes the perfect note, thanks in part to Stewart and Sullavan’s chemistry, which was so magnetic that they starred in four films together.
‘Love Actually’ (2003)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.
Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore “Love Actually.” It packs an all-star cast (Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman and more) and eight intertwined romance plots into a single film. Plus, it’s all set against a twinkling backdrop of London decked in its holiday finest. The story lines range from sweet (first crushes, grand gestures) to depressing (infidelity, widowerhood) to unexpectedly endearing (the flirtations between two nude stand-ins on a film set).
‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ (2001)
Stream it on Paramount+, Peacock, MGM+ and Hoopla.
Renée Zellweger earned an Oscar nomination for playing the perpetually single title diarist as she navigates career, love life and her own insecurities in the first of four films based on the novels by Helen Fielding. While the British comedy takes place over the course of a year, it opens and closes with festive holiday scenes, including a climactic moment in the snow and a New Year’s party with a reindeer-sweater-wearing Colin Firth, who had previously played Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC version of “Pride and Prejudice,” and is perfectly cast here as the uptight, modernized Mark Darcy.
‘The Holiday’ (2006)
Nancy Meyers’s “The Holiday” fires on all cylinders from start to finish. Wanting to escape for Christmas, the dejected Londoner Iris (Kate Winslet) arranges a house swap with Amanda (Cameron Diaz), a successful Los Angeles movie trailer producer. In their new countries, the two women find love with a composer (Jack Black) and a dashing single dad (Jude Law). There’s also a charming B-plot involving an aging Hollywood legend (Eli Wallach), Architectural Digest-worthy sets and a stirring score from Hans Zimmer, making this an eternal classic.
‘The Family Stone’ (2005)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
If you’re not in an emotionally stable place, proceed with caution. “The Family Stone” takes on an extra layer of melancholy following the death of Diane Keaton, who plays the bohemian Stone matriarch. The dramedy captures the chaos and comedy of a large-family gathering, alongside the brutal reality of our own mortality and the delicate feelings of unexpected holiday sparks. Is it realistic that the uptight Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) suddenly falls for the schlubby stoner brother (Luke Wilson) of her fiancé (Dermot Mulroney) at the same moment her visiting sister (Claire Danes) is falling for Meredith’s fiancé? No. But I never get tired of watching it unfold.
‘Little Women’ (1994)
No version of “Little Women” bottles up the cozy feeling of Christmas quite like the director Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation. The story plays out across seasons, but it’s the wintry, New England opening that establishes the joys of sisterhood and the pining of the boy next door, as the March sisters (Trini Alvarado, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes and Kirsten Dunst) wassail through the snowy streets of Concord and Laurie (Christian Bale) watches them from his frosty window. A beautiful score by Thomas Newman makes the perfect contemplative soundtrack for the season.
‘Serendipity’ (2001)
Stream it on Paramount+, MGM+ and Starz.
Sara (Kate Beckinsale) and Jonathan (John Cusack) meet by chance while Christmas shopping at Bloomingdale’s and enjoy a quintessentially 2000s New York date night — devouring frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3 and ice skating in Central Park. They’re both in relationships with other people but decide to exchange numbers in a roundabout way: He writes his on a $5 bill that they quickly spend, and she writes hers in a book that she sells to a used bookshop. If fate brings the numbers back to them, then they’ll know it’s meant to be. The film works even better now as a piece of nostalgia, a relic of a time when shopping at a department store was the only hope for a last-minute gift and social media stalking didn’t exist.
‘A Royal Christmas’ (2014)
Stream it on Hallmark+ and Hoopla.
In recent years, a popular subgenre of royal holiday romance has emerged in cable and streaming originals, typically involving an American woman falling in love with a secret European prince. One of the finest is Hallmark’s “A Royal Christmas,” starring the network’s Christmas queen Lacey Chabert as a Philadelphia seamstress whose boyfriend (Stephen Hagan) reveals he’s actually the prince of a tiny fictional country. He takes her home to the palace for Christmas, where she must contend with his domineering mother (Jane Seymour), who’d much rather her son marry a duchess. (For another monarchical standout, try the “Christmas Prince” franchise on Netflix.)
‘Happiest Season’ (2020)
Abby (Kristen Stewart) joins her girlfriend, Harper (Mackenzie Davis), at Harper’s parents’ house for the holidays with big plans to propose on Christmas morning. But everything goes awry on the way there, when Harper tells Abby she has yet to come out to her family and they’ll need to pretend to be platonic roommates. The director Clea DuVall stacked her ensemble with Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen, Daniel Levy and a standout performance from Aubrey Plaza (whose on-screen chemistry with Stewart is almost too good), as one of Harper’s ex-girlfriends.
‘Last Holiday’ (2006)
Stream it on Hulu and Paramount+,
Loosely based on the 1950 film of the same name, “Last Holiday” stars Queen Latifah as Georgia Byrd, a meek department store salesperson whose doctor informs her just before Christmas that she has only a few weeks left to live. Emboldened to make her final days count, she quits her job and uses her savings on a luxury European vacation. Her co-worker crush (LL Cool J) tracks her down abroad, but “Last Holiday” is as much about self love as romantic love, and it gave Latifah the chance to deliver a grounded performance after starring in a string of comedies in the early 2000s.
‘The Bishop’s Wife’ (1947)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel and Plex.
When a distraught bishop (David Niven) prays for guidance, it arrives in the debonair form of an angel named Dudley (Cary Grant), who uses his charm to help the bishop and his wife, Julia (Loretta Young), rekindle their marriage and rediscover the true spirit of Christmas. It’s a tad difficult to root for Julia to choose her dour husband over the transcendental Dudley, but so it must be. You can also stream “The Preacher’s Wife,” a 1996 remake starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston, on Tubi.
‘Something From Tiffany’s’ (2022)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
After her boyfriend gets into a car accident outside a Tiffany’s store and is rushed to the hospital, Rachel (Zoey Deutch) finds a jewelry box with an engagement ring among his belongings. In reality, it was accidentally swapped at the scene with a box belonging to a very attractive stranger named Ethan (Kendrick Sampson), who had come to his aid. On Christmas, the two men present the gifts to their partners without realizing the mix-up, and Rachel has to decide what she truly wants when Ethan arrives to reclaim his diamond ring. Based on the novel by Melissa Hill, it’s an enchantingly fresh story, despite the product placement.
‘The Princess Switch’ (2018)
Behold, a campy “Prince and the Pauper” tale of two identical strangers — a Chicago baker and a European duchess (both played by Vanessa Hudgens) — who swap places for the holidays and fall in love with each other’s partners and lifestyles. The Netflix original film is over-the-top, full of bad accents and the perfect fizzy escape. Hungry for more? It also spawned two sequels in which Hudgens plays a third look-alike role as a cousin who conspires to steal the throne.
‘Carol’ (2015)
If you’re in the mood for something a little more cerebral, try “Carol,” which The Times review described as a film that “filters a relatively happy romance through layers of anxiety, dread and psychological suspense.” Set during the 1952 Christmas season, the Todd Haynes film is a tale of forbidden love between a young photographer (Rooney Mara) and an older married woman (Cate Blanchett) at a time when homosexuality was considered taboo. Adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel, “Carol” received six Oscar nominations, including acting nods for Blanchett and Mara.
‘White Christmas’ (1954)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video and Hoopla.
During a holiday stay in Vermont, two former soldiers (Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye) turned famed song-and-dance men team up with the alluring Haynes sisters (Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen) to put on a Christmas extravaganza. Featuring the music of Irving Berlin, the film was originally intended to reunite the “Holiday Inn” stars Crosby and Fred Astaire, but Astaire bowed out after reading the musical’s script. Still, “White Christmas” — which was shot in Technicolor and was the first film to be released in VistaVision — was the highest grossing film of 1954.
‘Single All the Way’ (2021)
In an effort to appease his parents, the perpetually single Peter (Michael Urie) convinces his friend Nick (Philemon Chambers) to pretend to be his boyfriend at Christmas. Before they can introduce their fake relationship, however, Peter’s mom (Kathy Najimy) sets her son up on a blind date with a cute local man (Luke Macfarlane) — leaving Peter torn between his new crush and his emerging feelings for Nick. Although the film was marketed as Netflix’s first gay holiday romance, it doesn’t coast on that distinction and crafts a tender, funny story of family and genuine connection.
‘Last Christmas’ (2019)
Inspired by the George Michael song of the same name, “Last Christmas” follows a hapless London Christmas shop worker (Emilia Clarke) who falls for a mysterious man (Henry Golding) as he helps her start to see the world in a new light. The twisty plot’s connection to Michael’s music is both clever and devastating, and your mileage may vary on this Paul Feig-directed romance, which Emma Thompson co-wrote. The Times review described it as “dreary” and “mood killing.”
‘Meet Me Next Christmas’ (2024)
While the premise may be slightly absurd — a chic New York woman in her 30s, Layla (Christina Milian), is desperate to attend a sold-out Pentatonix concert — this Netflix romance is worth your time for providing a love triangle that truly feels balanced. As Layla races to find tickets for the a cappella group’s Christmas Eve show so she can meet up with a hunky stranger (Kofi Siriboe), she’s aided by another worthy suitor (Devale Ellis) on her quest. There is also a fun running gag in which the members of Pentatonix, who likewise become invested in the saga, can’t stop randomly harmonizing in conversation.
‘Let It Snow’ (2019)
Based on a trio of Y.A. stories by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle, “Let It Snow” follows a group of Midwestern teens as they experience various versions of love on a single Christmas Eve in Illinois. With a winning cast of young and youngish talent, including Isabela Merced, Shameik Moore, Kiernan Shipka, Jacob Batalon and Liv Hewson, this sweet film, which the Times described as “a fat-free affectionate debut” from the director Luke Snellin, delivers a dose of holiday optimism to melt even the most cynical of hearts.
The post 20 Great Holiday Romance Movies appeared first on New York Times.
