Teenagers and Christmas were made for each other. What a better time for a sweeping grand romantic proclamation and statement of feelings than around Christmastime? Let It Snow does the smart thing of giving us multiple mini stories about teens in and out of love around Christmas in a small town. I can hear Netflix checking all their demographic checkboxes…
You can fill Let It Snow’s stories into love buckets:
Unrequited Love:
- Tobin (Mitchell Hope) longs to start dating his BFF, Angie (Kiernan Shipka), especially when the perfect JP (Matthew Noszka) sets his sights on Angie.
- Dorrie (Liv Hewson) wants to make her relationship with popular dancer Kerry (Anna Akana) public, though Kerry’s scared to come out.
Lost In Love:
- Taking care of her sick mother, Julie (Isabela Merced) bumps into popular R&B Singer Stuart (Shameik Moore), who’s been left alone at Christmas, again.
- Dorrie’s best friend Addie (Odeya Rush) is convinced her boyfriend is going to break up with her through her dependence on Instagram and Snapchat.
- Keon (Jacob Batalon) wants to throw the party of the year on Christmas Eve to get his name out there as a musician of renown, and maybe impress a girl or 2.
Scoring Let It Snow is easy. However many storylines you like is your star rating. The Julie/Stuart one has the best acting and most interesting material, since Julie’s conflicted about leaving her mother to go to college, or basically live her own life. It’s not original, but it’s at least well thought out. The Dorrie/Kerry storyline is also short and simple, and provides an updated spin on the teenage public/private relationship. Ok, and I cheated a little: I gave half a point each to the Tobin and Addie stories. It’s fun to watch the Tobin/Angie story because of how perfect JP is; you start rooting for him to get the girl instead of the kinda crappy Tobin. Angie’s by FAR the worst character in the movie, but that storyline gets half a point because they paired her with the best cameo in the movie, who delivers all the best laughs. So that’s 3/5. As for Keon’s story. Jacob Batalon is always great, but there’s nothing for him to do here: he’s the odd man out who gets to throw the big party in the movie, which I’m sure Batalon is fine with.
Throw in a little small town Anytown USA. Perfect snowfalls that look amazing but don’t get on your hair. And you’ve got yourself a perfectly fine Christmas movie. Add some teenagers, generically woke alt rocks song, and the schmaltzy dialogue actually makes sense and is easy to digest as you have Let It Snow on in the background while you do other things.