Netflix keeps the holiday magic going with Christmas on Mistletoe Farm, a British import from Debbie Isitt, the writer/director of the 2009 holiday franchise-starter Nativity! Is Christmas on Mistletoe Farm the start of a new series of holiday hijinks movies, or is this the beginning and end of the Mistletoe Farm saga?
CHRISTMAS ON MISTLETOE FARM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Scott Garnham plays Matt Cunningham, a professional professional working for a firm and/or agency in London — and he’s been given the dubious honor of pitching to a potential client on Christmas Eve. It’s a make-or-break deal, one that could cost his entire department their jobs! Just when he needs time, peace, and quiet to really hunker down and nail this pitch, he receives notice that he’s inherited his estranged father’s farm. After some real encouragement from his five children, and some pretend encouragement from his late wife, the single dad packs up the kids and heads off to Mistletoe Farm.
Matt quickly regrets this decision, what with the farm having no power, a leaky roof, plumbing issues, no Wi-Fi, a fridge full of rotten eggs, dozens of animals to tend to, a larger-than-life farmhand named Beano (The Circle UK’s Scott Paige) who lives in the barn, and the ever-present specter of the father who abandoned Matt and his mom decades ago. All that plus five elementary school-aged children? Matt’s gonna get so much work done! Everyone’s definitely keeping their jobs!
As if all that wasn’t enough, the farm’s losing money (no surprise, really) and at risk of being bought by developers. Will Beano and the kids be able to convince Matt that life on the farm is a life worth living? Or will Matt come to his senses, pack up the kids, and get back to London ASAP so he can work on this pitch and not cause all of his coworkers to get laid off?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This could very well be another installment in the Nativity! franchise. Mistletoe Farm has a reliance on broad — we’re talking miles wide — humor, tons of kiddie antics, and a lead comedy duo consisting of a harried leading man and a heavyset maniac. Scott Garnham actually played the Martin Freeman role in Nativity!’s stage adaptation, and Paige has the same cuddly bulldozer energy as Nativity!’s Marc Wootton.
Performance Worth Watching: Scott Garnham is the only member of the cast turning in a performance as a recognizable human being. The rest of the adults are playing cartoon characters with incredibly simple personalities in outfits inspired by a box of 8 Crayola crayons.
Memorable Dialogue: “Hello! Uh, I am Beano — farmhand slash animal wrangler slash professional poo-picker-upper. Hashtag Beano at your service.”
A Holiday Tradition: Matt’s father always cut down the best tree on Mistletoe Farm and gave it to the town for their Christmas tree lighting ceremony. And Beano is hellbent on keeping the Hoedown Snowdown tradition alive, even if Matt is like the rest of us and completely perplexed by the idea.
Two Turtle Doves: In Great American Family’s Merry Christmas Wish, a similarly work-obsessed person inherits a farm along with a farmhand. She has a decidedly different relationship with her new farmhand… although honestly, Christmas on Mistletoe Farm would have been slightly more interesting if Matt and Beano had fallen in love.
Does the Title Make Any Sense?: The title is the only thing about this movie that makes any sense.
Our Take: You know how the holidays can just completely wear you down, leaving you more exhausted than you ever thought possible? Watching Christmas on Mistletoe Farm leaves you feeling like you’ve wrapped a dozen presents, chaperoned your kid’s in-class holiday party, and thoroughly decked every single hall in your home — I’m talking you-used-a-ladder levels of thorough, here. This movie is 100 solid minutes of barnyard humor (you bet a baby pig pees in someone’s face) and maudlin moments (did I mention that these kids have a dead mom, which is apparently a prerequisite for Christmas movies?).
The performances outside of Granham’s mild-mannered Matt are too big to grab hold of or even comprehend. Beano enters the movie a mystery — he’s a farmhand who sleeps in the barn, wears rainbow-colored sweaters, forgets to name goats except when he gives them very specific names, and believes that you can understand the animals if you just listen. He also impersonates Jack Nicholson in The Shining and imparts lessons like “we worship the poop” to Matt. You could tell me anything about Beano — that he’s Matt’s brother, an elf, an alien, or a pagan deity held over from the days of Saturnalia — and I would believe it. There is no baseline reality on Mistletoe Farm.
Life on Mistletoe Farm left me so tired that, when Beano introduces Matt and the kids to the patrons of the local pub, I found myself pleading with the film to shift narratives and follow literally anyone else outside of the bar and into a brand new story. It’s quickly made clear that the village of Cobbledon is made up entirely of Beanos. There’s a scene wherein the kids, lost on their way to school, are greeted a half dozen of these villagers as they appear looking like a roving gang of Teletubbies in knitwear. It felt like I was watching The Wicker Man.
I know that I am not in the target demographic for this feature film, and I can clearly see that kids — perhaps younger kids — will like seeing farm animals on screen and they won’t see all of the pratfalls and mishaps coming. But I can’t say this film is for the whole family, because I think anyone over the age of 10 would not want to waste a family movie night on this and demand to watch The Christmas Chronicles instead.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Christmas on Mistletoe Farm left me siding with the greedy real estate developers.
