James R | On 23, Dec 2021

Director: Michael Mayer
Cast: Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers, Luke Macfarlane, Jennifer Coolidge
Certificate: 15

“You should come home with me. We can pretend we fell in love after all these years.” That’s Peter (Urie) to his best friend, Nick (Chambers), in Single All the Way, Netflix’s latest addition to its ever-expanding collection of Christmas films – and while the set-up might sound like the most conventional thing in the world, that’s kind of the point.

Peter is a social media marketing executive who lives with Nick, his roommate, an author who spends most of his time trying to solve writer’s block by getting paid for doing oddjobs on TaskRabbit. But when Peter finds himself single just before the holidays, he recruits Nick to avoid being embarrassed in front of his family and pretend to be his boyfriend. The fact that his mother, Carole (Kathy Najimy), has also set him up on a blind date only makes things slightly more complicated, not least because the blind date turns out to be an attractive trainer named James (Luke Macfarlane).

If you expecting an awkward mix-up with a woman at this point, this is where Single All the Way spins its charm: it’s a queer rom-com but one that isn’t rooted in coming out narratives or family shame. It’s a film in which Peter’s family already accepts him for all who is, which allows it to sit alongside all the other conventional festive rom-coms that have lit up our screens for decades.

That means there’s more time to enjoy a scene-stealing performance from the delightful Jennifer Coolidge as Peter’s aunt, Sandy (Jennifer Coolidge), a drama queen who has a festive tradition of putting on a Christmas play that’s more about her than the Nativity story. But the real star of the show is the chemistry between Michael Urie and Philemon Chambers. The pair have a lived-in feel to their friendship that naturally fits into the will-they-won’t-they formula. They bring a spark to Chad Hodge’s script, which has all the snappy wordplay you could want – and, while it marks a notable step forward in Netflix’s Christmas offerings, is comfortingly familiar in almost every other regard. Plus you’ll be wanting to make fake Santa beards with shaving foam for years to come.

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