A REVIEW by Lily Wheadon

  Christmas movies often seem like endless strings of clichés, sappy endings, and LED lights. Netflix’s 2019 film Let it Snow was no different than the majority of Christmas movies, but some unique touches made it more entertaining than most.

  Let it Snow documents the stories of various small town teenagers on Christmas Eve while exploring different friendship, relationship, and familial dynamics along the way, adding a coming-of-age twist to a stereotypical Christmas movie. 

  The variety of storylines meant that there was very little filler time, and each second of the movie counted towards the plot development. The downside to this approach was that many plotlines felt rushed, and parts of the story felt missing. For example, most of the characters are suspicious of a local woman who always wears a tinfoil hat, but one character, Addie, gets to know this woman over the course of the movie. The two characters, despite their differences, form an unlikely friendship and teach each other more about their outlooks on life. Addie continuously asks the tinfoil woman about why she wears tinfoil, which she refuses to answer each time. This seems more like lazy screenwriting than being productive in terms of character development.

  Character development was sacrificed in many other storylines, including the one between Addie and her best friend Dorrie. The two get into a big fight over seemingly nothing other than Dorrie believing that Addie deserves better than a boyfriend who ignores her and does not seem to care about her, while Dorrie spends most of the film obsessing over a girl who treats her poorly by being incredibly hot-and-cold with her. The failure to recognize Dorrie’s hypocrisy in the fight and having her end up with this girl who treated her like garbage for 90 percent of the movie was another miss when it came to screenwriting.

  One of the better storylines in the movie was that of Isabella Merced’s character, Julie. Although her character started off as the cliché “girl who doesn’t care about celebrity slowly starts falling in love with him,” she had more layers that viewers were able to see as the movie progressed. At the beginning of the movie, she seems to be the only girl in the world who pays no attention to famous singer Stuart Bale, which had me rolling my eyes, but Julie soon reveals information about her family life and how she feels torn between going to college in New York and staying home to take care of her sick mother. This element of her story was much more interesting, and the way that Stuart forms a bond with not only Julie, but her family as well, was entertaining. This story could have been made into an entire movie by itself, and I would have loved to see more of Stuart’s world and how Julie could have fit into it. Regardless, Stuart and Julie’s dynamic was one of my favorites to watch, and it kept me hooked on the movie.

  Although some of the writing felt rushed or lazy, the coming-of-age elements of Let it Snow made it unique and entertaining enough to keep me engaged for 90 minutes. Despite the lack of character development, the plot was busy enough to keep the movie relatively enjoyable. With the festive setting, cheesy romances, and fresh perspectives on classic movie plots, this is a solid film to put on with any free time over the holiday break.