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How will The Princess Switch: Switched Again fare?
The holiday season is upon us, which means your TV will soon be flooded with loads of festive new films. Traditionally, the Hallmark Channel has been the go-to destination for fans of delightfully cheesy — and often absurd — holiday movies, but in recent years, Netflix has come on as a strong contender for the throne. From the streaming giant's beloved and delightfully wacky A Christmas Prince trilogy to even more ludicrous fare like The Knight Before Christmas, silly holiday movies have found a home at Netflix. That's especially true this year, as the latest Netflix original holiday movies may be the network's most wild yet.
Netflix is gifting fans with at least nine original holiday films this year, and most of them are pretty out-there. Although there's no new installment of A Christmas Prince this year, there's plenty of others to last you well into the New Year. The assumption is that none of these movies will be good in the traditional sense, but they should all be plenty fun. That's why you'll find the films below ranked not from worst to best, but from least-ridiculous to most-ridiculous. Because let's be real, no one is watching Netflix holiday movies to get a head start on their office Oscar pool.
5. The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two
The first Christmas Chronicles was a decent-sized hit back in 2018, with okay reviews. So naturally, the film got a sequel. And since the original story about a pair of kids who try to kidnap Santa (who's kind of a badass for some reason?) was plenty absurd, expect the sequel — which adds the evil Belsnickel as a villain who's out to cancel Christmas — to be twice as wild.
4. Dolly Parton's Christmas On The Square
Dolly Parton is a national treasure, but that doesn't make this holiday film any less ridiculous. It's a Christmas Carol-like tale about a very mean rich woman who plans to evict an entire town on Christmas Eve unless a country singing angel (Parton) can convince her to act like a human being instead of a cartoon villain.
3. Tudo Bem No Natal Que Vem (Just Another Christmas)
In this Brazilian export, a Christmas-hating man falls off a roof while dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve and then wakes up on Christmas Eve the following year... and the year after that... and the year after that... etc. It's a time loop movie, like Groundhog Day or Palm Springs, but instead of the protagonist reliving the same day over and over, he's reliving different Christmas' over and over. Are you confused yet? You should be, because this is maybe the most complicated Christmas movie plot ever conceived.
2. Alien XMas
OK, big exhale. This is a computer animated kids movie about aliens who set out to steal the Earth's gravity on Christmas only to have their plans thwarted by one of their own who discovers the true meaning of Christmas. Or something like that.
1. The Princess Switch: Switched Again
Netflix is just toying with us with this one. The sequel to the 2018 film where Vanessa Hudgens plays a baker and a duchess who happen to be identical and switch lives at Christmas was pretty run-of-the-mill ridiculous, but its sequel is taking things to another level by throwing yet another Hudgens doppelgänger into the mix. At this point, this franchise really needs to address where these Hudgens clones are coming from. Are they part of a government experiment? Is this an Orphan Black situation? The people demand answers!
Netflix's 2020 batch of original holiday movies may be on the absurd side, but let's face it: you wouldn't want it any other way.