A Merry Little Ex-Mas review (2025)
A Merry Little Ex-Mas is bafflingly horrible even by the less demanding standards of holiday movies.
It’s rare to find a Christmas movie so devoid of any kind of chemistry with any of the cast, logical script or even a touch of genuine, heartfelt emotion. Maybe in that sense A Merry Little Ex-Mas is a bit of a Christmas miracle?
Kate (Alicia Silverstone) and Everett (Oliver Hudson) are calling it quits on their decades-plus marriage. Kate thinks Everett has prioritized his medical career as their little town doctor over their marriage. Everett thinks Kate has gone overboard with her sustainability efforts in their home.
With their son, Gabe (Hudson’s actual son Wilder Hudson), finishing his senior year of high school and their daughter Sienna (Emily Hall) already in college, Kate has decided now is the perfect time to leave the sleepy little town and resume her professional dreams in New York. Predictably, Kate has decided to keep that plan a secret until after the holidays. Only her best friend April (Melissa Joan Hart) knows of Kate’s intentions to skip town.
Given her longtime stint as a producer on Hart’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch series, it was surprising that screenwriter Holly Hester (The Royal Treatment) didn’t cram more scenes with Hart and Silverstone together. If nothing else, their scenes are among a handful that actually resonate as moments that would play out with real people.
Sienna arrives back home with her boyfriend, Nigel (Timothy Innes) in tow. Nigel is a one-note lame joke of a character whose shtick is to act like a Harry Potter impersonator. The first five Potter references aren’t amusing, but Hester doesn’t stop throwing up those jokes in the hopes that one will land. That’s emblematic of A Merry Little Ex-Mas as a whole. Some of the jokes land with such a thump that they should be accompanied with a rimshot.
To complete the family unit are Everett’s parents — Mike (Derek McGrath) and Daryl (Geoffrey Owens).
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Kate gets a surprise upon learning Everett has taken advantage of their nine-months separation to spark up a new relationship with Tess (Jameela Jamil), a stunning, seemingly perfect woman who’s changing the world in the way Kate always envisioned. In the cliche script, A Merry Little Ex-Mas would have Tess actually not be as perfect as she appears easing the path for Kate and Everett to reunite. Instead, she’s one of the more sensible characters in the film and Jamil is the lone bright spot among the cast.
That can’t be said for Kate, who starts dramatically overreacting and fearing — with no discernible evidence — that her kids are going to start liking Tess more than their mother. If nothing else, Kate’s spazzing out justifies Gabe and Sienna spending more time with Everett to avoid a meltdown.
In yet another ill-conceived decision, Hester has Kate have a meet-cute with Chet (Pierson Fode, who fared far better in The Wrong Paris), whose tagline on his business card is that he is a man of many hats. Maybe one of those could be a new love interest for Kate?
Chet is yet another goofy caricature of a movie character. He shoulder-bumps the family upon meeting them, refers to himself in the third person and just generally doesn’t seem like someone even in a romcom that would be appealing to Kate and vice versa.
Director Steve Carr (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) can’t figure out a way to make these various characters and silly subplots work. It’s tough when the chemistry between the characters feels so forced. Mike and Daryl seem ill-matched perhaps due to the 10-year age gap between Owens and McGrath? Sienna and Nigel barely have any scenes suggesting they could remotely be convincing as a couple even for pretend.
The worst and most damning for A Merry Little Ex-Mas is the lack of any kind of spark with Kate and Everett. They have a little inside joke where the call each other Betty and Al from the Paul Simon song “You Can Call Me Al,” but there’s little evidence that they should be reunited by the end credits.
As meandering as A Merry Little Ex-Mas was for the first third, its final act takes it down another depth as Hester rolls out every holiday movie trope that Carr executes in the most by-the numbers sleepy manner possible. None of the subplot resolutions feel earned so much as wrapped up to check off a box. It’s not encouraging and feeling like none of the characters deserve a happy ending.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas is a painfully laugh-free Christmas movie experience with a telegraphed resolution from the start that makes the arduous path getting there all the more unbearable.
Rating: 1.5 out of 10
Photo Credit: Netflix
For some other Christmas movies, check out Hallmark Christmas Collection 35 on DVD at Amazon.
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