David Farnor | On 23, Dec 2021

Director: Chris Cottam
Cast: Iwan Rheon, Freida Pinto, Debi Mazar, Helena Zengel
Certificate: 12

Couples meeting. Family reunions. Some kind of royalty. A clash with capitalism. Choosing love over work. These are the things we all know to expect from a Christmas movie. A Christmas Number One, to its credit, isn’t that.

The film stars Iwan Rheon as Blake, who has a thrash metal band called Scurve. He’s not the one you’d go to for a family-friendly festive song, but he can’t say no when he’s asked by his Christmas-obsessed niece, Nina (Helena Zengel), who has terminal cancer. But things get trickier when the song is discovered online by Meg (Freida Pinto), a music manager who is looking for a chart-topper for her boy band, 5 Together.

Meg, of course, has just gone through a break-up with a pop star, and Blake and her immediately get off on the wrong foot, while Nina tries to play matchmaker. Can they find a way to get over their differences? Will the song be released in the spirit it’s meant? Will unexpected romance fly in the air? And will the track get to number one?

If it sounds like that’s a lot of balls to juggle, you’re not wrong. Written by Robert Chandler, Giles New and Keiron Self, the film is closer to three movies than one coherent film, with each strand (music industry satire, pop-tinged rom-com, poignant family drama) competing with each other rather than blending together in natural harmony.

And yet that tension at the heart of the script also takes the movie in several pleasantly unexpected directions, including the resolution of the boy band conflict. Iwan Rheon is enjoyably gruff and sincere as the down-on-his-luck musician, while Frieda Pinto has easy chemistry with everyone she encounters – and, between then, Helena Zengel (fresh from System Crasher) treads the tricky line between exuberant youth and annoying enthusiasm. Director Chris Cottam, meanwhile, shakes things up with some TikTok-style interludes. It’s a shame, then, that the resulting uneven mixtape winds up somewhere so familiar and conventional. Moving, sweet and still concluding with a catchy number, this is a Christmas film that will be remembered for daring to try something new, even if it doesn’t always pay off – or, in terms of Christmas number ones, somewhere between Mr Blobby and Leona Lewis.

Add to Watchlist