Netflix has suckered me into watching yet another Pentatonix Christmas movie. They aren’t the main characters of Meet Me Next Christmas but they are a very large part of the plot. Like, unavoidably large part of the plot.
Layla (Christina Milian) gets stuck in an airport on Christmas Eve, forcing her to miss the annual Pentatonix concert in New York City that she attends with her boyfriend. As she waits in the airport lounge, she meets two men - Teddy (Devale Ellis), who gives her some culinary advice, and James (Kofi Siriboe), who connects with Layla deeply after a long conversation. However, since Layla is currently in a relationship, they decide to not pursue this connection further. Instead, James makes Layla promise that, if her relationship should fail in the next year, she will meet him at the next Christmas Eve Pentatonix concert to see if there is more between them. A year later, Layla has broken up with her boyfriend but the tickets to the Pentatonix concert are sold out and she didn’t have a ticket. She unknowingly hires Teddy, now working as a concierge, to help her obtain the elusive concert ticket in order to make her dreams come true.
Let me start this off by saying I don’t hate Pentatonix. I used to listen to them in the 2010s but then they started feeling over marketed. Their faces and music was just everywhere. So having a whole movie dedicated to the group and their music makes me have those over marketed feelings again. And this movie feels even more so. There are so many times a character says “Oh my god! You love Pentatonix too!” or “Who doesn’t know Pentatonix?!” or “Hey, listen to this Pentatonix song!” If I drank a shot of alcohol every time the group name was spoken, I would have been way over the limit in the first half hour of the movie. It, honestly, was a little grating.
The sad thing is that the rest of the movie is really cute. I love the way Layla and Teddy were running around the city trying to find tickets. There were scammers and scalpers and even a weird couple that just wanted them to run an errand for them in exchange for a ticket. Unfortunately, all of the cute things were cut with kinda annoying scenes of Pentatonix in their hotel suite following the pair on social media. We really didn’t need their commentary on what was going on. I, honestly, would have liked the movie better if there was a little less backstage Pentatonix and a little more of Layla/Teddy running around New York City. NYC is an amazing backdrop for a movie and there is so much you could do with it. Instead, we’re interrupted with random harmonies in the middle of a conversation. Thanks, I hate it.
Rating: Can they go to a different concert next year?