The official premise of Netflix's newest holiday movie, "The Knight Before Christmas," is: "Medieval magic sends a 14th-century knight to modern-day Ohio, where he falls for a high school science teacher who's disillusioned by love."
It's silly, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.
Like other Netflix Christmas films before it, "The Knight Before Christmas" has its pros and cons. The effects aren't great. And, yes, the idea that a knight from 1334 would get magicked by a witch just to fall in love with an Ohio schoolteacher is a concept that requires you to check logic at the door. But, as we've mentioned before, in Christmas movies, logic need not apply.
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Vanessa Hudgens's character, Brooke, also checks a lot of the romantic-comedy genre's more unfortunate boxes, like "woman who doesn't believe in love because her boyfriend cheated on her" and "woman who is excessively clumsy for the first half of the film." There is also a bit of extremely heavy-handed product placement.
But – like Hudgens's last Netflix Christmas film, "The Princess Switch" – "The Knight Before Christmas" mostly leans into its silliness for the better. The noble knight, Sir Cole, is kind, gallant and designed to appeal to those that had a crush on Heath Ledger in "A Knight's Tale." The film mentions the glory of hot chocolate so often you almost have to make yourself a cup. And best of all, it reminds you what the holidays are actually about: friends, family and helping others.
If you can suspend all cynicism – and maybe look away during the built-in Alexa ads – watching this movie is a fairly cozy way to spend 92 minutes.
Last holiday season, KVUE's Britny Eubank reviewed all of Netflix's live-action holiday offerings in 24 hours. So far this year, in addition to this review, she's reviewed Netflix's "Holiday in the Wild" and "Let It Snow." You can check those stories out to get yourself in the holiday spirit – and if you want to read more of her thoughts on all sorts of movies, she writes about them every month.
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