A MERRY LITTLE EX-MAS (2025)

Starring Alicia Silverstone, Oliver Hudson, Jameela Jamil, Pierson Fodé, Linda Kash, Melissa Joan Hart, Timothy Innes, Emily Hall and Wilder Hudson.

Screenplay by Holly Hester.

Directed by Steve Carr.

Distributed by Netflix. 91 minutes. Not Rated.

Who would think that this is at least the fourth cheesy holiday movie in recent years to shoehorn the awkward pun “ex-mas” into its title? It’s like – hey, we mixed “ex” and “Xmas.” Sweet.

If you find the title of this new Netflix holiday rom-com amusing then you will probably find the film clever, too. For the rest of us, it’s pretty standard holiday romantic fare – a shut-off your mind cheese fest about love and family and the Christmas spirit.

You’ve seen it all before, but it can sort of work as electric wallpaper, a relatively unchallenging bit of tinsel that has a tiny bit more of a storyline than watching a video of a burning yule log.  

On the plus side, this film offers a lead role to the always likeable and way-underused Clueless icon Alicia Silverstone (last seen portraying a character who spends the movie in a coma in Bugonia). Silverstone is so charismatic that you almost overlook how clichéd her character and storyline is here.

Silverstone plays Kate, a former green energy exec who gave up her promising career when she fell in love with med school student Everett (Oliver Hudson of Rules of Engagement). They fell in love, got married, moved back to his bucolic hometown and had kids.

Twenty-some years later, the bloom is off the rose, the kids are leaving for college and Kate feels stifled as the small town handy-person. She still holds on to her green ideals – at Christmas, for example, it is traditional for all the tree ornaments to be made with safe, found materials, and for all of the presents to be handmade.

While Kate and Everett still feel love, they no longer feel any passion. Therefore they decide to get divorced – they call it a “conscious uncoupling” – but they swear they want to stay close friends and in each other’s lives.

Therefore, for the last Christmas before their younger son goes to college, they agree to have a big family Christmas at the homestead (which they all refer to, oddly enough, as “The mothership.”)

Even though dad is living elsewhere, everything is fine, at least until Kate finds out that he is dating a model-hot, younger woman. (Jameela Jamil of The Good Place). Surprised to find herself jealous, Kate hooks up with a younger, dumb, himbo jack-of-all-trades (Pierson Fodé). And Everett finds himself getting a bit jealous himself.

Of course, Kate has a secret she is planning to keep until after the holidays – she is going to move back to the big city to go back to her old career, and sell the house the family had grown in.

So they have the traditional family Christmas, with Everett’s two gay dads (because, why not?), their two kids, their daughter’s dweeby boyfriend and the two shiny, sexy, but essentially shallow new lovers.

Can you say wacky hijinx?

There is nothing even the tiniest bit surprising about A Merry Little Ex-Mas. The writing is awkward, and the humor is broad and misses more often than it hits. Yet, thanks to its amiable cast (particularly Silverstone and Jamil) and its good heart, the movie goes down as smoothly as hot buttered rum.

A Merry Little Ex-Mas was made by Netflix, not the Hallmark Channel, but you wouldn’t know the difference. It is all formula, but it’s a popular formula. So this year if you get tired of the 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story, this film is as good as any to pass the time while you await Christmas dinner.

Alex Diamond

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 11, 2025.