Stream It Or Skip It: ‘EXmas’ on Freevee, A Christmas Movie Where Hijinks And Hilarity Get In The Way of Romance

Freevee‘s EXmas attempts to prove the potent romantic power of the holidays, as exes reunite in an unexpected way. Workaholic Graham Stroop (Robbie Amell) surprises his family by coming home for the holidays, only to find that they’ve already invited his ex-fiancée, Ali Moyer (Leighton Meester), behind his back to celebrate Christmas. Refusing to give up ground, Graham and Ali make a bet to see who can get the other to pack their bags and beat it by Christmas day and go to great lengths to take the other one down. Is love still in the cards for these competitive exes or is their messy relationship beyond saving?

EXMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ali Moyer (Leighton Meester) is a talented Los Angeles-based baker who dreams of owning and operating her own pastry truck. Her friends are off to spend the holidays with their respective loved ones, but since she and her fiancé of five years, video game coder Graham Stroop (Robbie Amell), parted ways six months ago, she’s poised to spend this Christmas alone in the big house the two once shared.

For as much as she may seem to be in a bind, Graham is doing worse. The workaholic seems to not be taking great care of himself since getting dumped by Ali, and throwing himself into his job and TV dinners isn’t helping him heal. He calls his parents, pro-canabis used car salesman Dennis (Michael Hitchcock) and Jesus-loving homemaker Jeannie (Kathryn Greenwood), to say he can’t make it home to Minnesota for Christmas this year because of work, but then immediately after hanging up he decides to book a flight anyway without telling them. Surely this won’t come back to haunt him.

But it does, of course, as he returns home to a lukewarm reception from Jeannie (who is wrapping a gift shaped like male genitalia for reasons unknown) and his spunky younger sister, Mindy (Veronika Slowikowska), due to the fact they went behind his back to invite Ali to spend the holidays with them. The betrayal runs even deeper, as Graham finds that Ali and Mindy even have a 75-day Wordle streak, and that she’s been keeping in touch with his sister and mom for months. Oh, and Ali still refuses to return the ring. Yikes.

Before we go thinking that Graham is blameless, Ali offers to give them a chance to clear the air and he shoots her down. He seems to prefer being petty and prideful to openly and honestly communicating. To each their own!

Dennis and Graham’s youngest sibling, grad student Elliott (Steven Huy), enter, greeting Ali warmly to truly set the tone of brewing competition and animosity between these two exes as they fight for favor in the Stroop household. A game night that evening reveals a wicked competitive (and potentially sociopathic?) streak in Ali than leads to a bet between her and Graham that whoever can drive the other out of the Stroop household by Christmas morning gets to stay then and “for every holiday forever.” Talk about high stakes.

What ensues is a back-and-forth that sees the exes messing with each other by trying to make the other jealous, playing on each others’ weaknesses, and sabotaging baked goods (the worst sin of all) in a toxic display that prompts the thought “maybe exes should just stay broken up.” Oh, and there’s a lot of Heineken product placement. A LOT.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s hard to say because it feels like a lot of different things tossed into a blender together. Like the family seems to want to feel John Hughes-like but their Midwestern-ness ends up feeling more like a spoof of Middle America.

The Heineken product placement was somewhat reminiscent of the gratuitous product placement throughout Wayne’s World but lacks the latter’s self-awareness that makes it more funny than feeling like a cash grab. There’s also an accidentally getting high scene and a hockey montage that feel like they were each ripped from movies in totally different genres (like if 21 Jump Street and Slap Shot were inexplicably spliced together). So it’s so much going on, it doesn’t really remind me of one thing in particular.

Performance Worth Watching: A lot of these characters are inherently unlikable. Ali sometimes reads as sociopathic and controlling, Graham as extremely self-involved and out of touch with reality. Dennis and Jeannie at first seem like cartoonish Midwestern parental figures, but we also soon learn that they’re somehow both hyper-religious and hyper-sexual. Youngest son, Elliott, comes across as woke and yet when his dad, Dennis, made a quip that made himself sound anti-vax, he suddenly had nothing to say.

Ultimately, it’s Veronika Slowikowska who stands out the most as Mindy, contributing a genuine humor and charm to the role that makes her stand out as the most natural and likable amongst them all. Here’s to hoping we see more comedic work from her in the future!

Memorable Dialogue: “Everyone has different beliefs. I, for one, don’t think COVID’s real,” said Dennis unprompted whilst ice fishing with Graham, Ali, and Elliott, making me audibly gasp.

A Holiday Tradition: Every year, Dennis’s used car dealership has a big holiday party to help drum up business and spread Christmas cheer. On the nice side, this annual party is a reminder for Dennis and Jeannie of the college Christmas party where they first met and began their love story.

But on the naughty (or at least, slightly bizarre) end of things, the tradition seems to include live animals on display that tend to get a bit out of control. Last year, apparently, there was an issue with rabbits, so this year there’s a goat. Unfortunately, Ali has an “irrational hatred of goats” that ends with her making a major scene running from the goat, who is only after the feed that Graham has secretly slipped into Ali’s pocket to mess with her. My guess is that, like the rabbits, Mr. Goat won’t be invited back next year.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: Yep! It exes spending Christmas together. Put ’em together and what do you get? EXmas. Also it’s a clever play on words. EXmas vs XMas… You get it!

Our Take: Between the goat fiasco, accidental weed cookie drug trip, repeated thefts and gags involving baby Jesus from the Stroop’s nativity scene, and hockey game montage that ends with a heart attack, there was just so much going on it was hard for any of it to really feel like it belonged. I’m all for goofs and shenanigans but in this film they sometimes seemed to occur just to force a sense of wackiness and hilarity that tended to result more in a feeling of cringe or discomfort (such as when Jeannie kept unknowingly making sexual innuendos).

That being said, I do appreciate that the cast seemed to all truly commit to being campy and a bit over the top, which did make for some fun and genuinely entertaining moments, like when Ali and Graham were going back and forth about ovaries before being sent off to to the store to replace the first stolen baby Jesus.

There were clearly plenty of skilled actors on the project, but some of the characters were so inherently unlikable it didn’t really give them a chance to do their best work. Like when Dennis made that COVID comment, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the movie. Are we even supposed to like any of these characters at all? I found myself not rooting for Ali and Graham to get together because they kept exhibiting toxic behaviors and terribly miscommunicating to the point I wondered how they were even happily together for five years before this, and even their eventual resolution felt unearned.

But hey, maybe a future divorce will just lead to a sequel, EXmas 2: Exier Than Ever, that will give them the chance to get everything right.

Our Call: SKIP IT! I really wanted to like this movie but the main characters were just too unlikable and there was a bit too much going on for it to wrap up into one cohesive, satisfying gift of a Christmas movie.