Netflix’s latest Christmas romance comedy, The Knight Before Christmas, incorporates Santa Claus and Mistletoe into the time-honored tradition of time and dimension traveling in films such as Kate & Leopold, Enchanted, and Thor. The pun of the title refers to Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse), a knight from 1334 England, who appears in America in 2019.
He comes there by a revolution of fabulous tropes: when an old woman in a forest asks him to help her get home, he does not reject her, à la Beauty and the Beast, and then learns that she is a mighty fairy is that will force them to learn a lesson in humility. Instead, Sir Cole jumps to her aid immediately. As a reward, she sends him into the future and tells him that this will be his opportunity to become “a true knight”. But if he does not find out what his fate is before midnight on Christmas Eve, he will stay forever in 2019. Confused, he wanders straight to Brooke (Vanessa Hudgens), a recently single teacher who has seen the concept of true love cynical. To tell Avril Lavigne, he was a knight, she was a girl, it was Christmas, can I make that clearer?
When Brooke accidentally arrests Cole with her car, she accepts it as an act of remorse, allowing him to stay in her home while he recovers. She assumes that he is a cosplayer and that the accident caused a concussion. Therefore, he is convinced that he is a medieval knight. Over time, however, she begins to believe that his story of being sent to the future may actually be true.
A holiday horse ride. Netflix / Brooke Palmer
In the meantime, Cole is adapting to 21st century life, setting fire to Brooke’s farm, threatening Brooke’s ex-boyfriend to fight a duel, and trying to hunt down local wildlife before he comes to the grocery store.
The most important element here is Whitehouse, whose generosity and bright-eyed, bushy-tailed appearance makes The Knight Before Christmas more pleasing than a repeat of any other fish-from-water fable. He is a less beefy, rather silly version of Chris Hemsworth, and director Monika Mitchell and writer Cara J. Russell take advantage of this fact and even tear off the Thor diner scene, in which Thor, delighted with human food, fades away Another drink screams as if He was still in a Viking Met hall.
Whitehouse does not have much chemistry with Hudgens, but where a lack of sparks could pose a problem for another romance, this is not a big obstacle. Apart from a shirtless scene, this is a chaste fantasy – an action that brings another potential love interest for Cole is quickly banished – and part of Cole’s appeal is that, as good as he is, he’s romantically harmless.
But Sir Cole is a good man through and through. He is not proud or otherwise mean – his only real mistake is that he is not yet in love with Brooke. His journey into the 21st century is not the result of a curse, and despite the difference of 2019, he is largely relaxed when it comes to finding himself in the future. The fact that he had to work hard to become a knight means he’s ready to help in any way he can, helping Brooke bake for a party, and helping the police if they have potential pickpockets catch or rescue a young girl who wanders on thin ice.
Spirit, but with bread. Netflix / Brooke Palmer
Some further details for 2019 give the film a higher level of specificity, with Cole obsessed with Brooke’s Alexa (in a surprising phase of product placement for Amazon) and barking after learning to watch TV. The more he watches, the more he becomes familiar with the current vernaculars (like “Lit AF”), which he throws back at Brooke in an exaggerated American accent. It is worthy, but still sweet.
The knight before Christmas, however, suffers from the attempt to check off as many boxes as possible. Equal parts are a modern fairy tale, a time travel film that people use to understand and appreciate their own era, and a Christmas magic film, and the creators do nothing useful to refresh these genre traps or play with their conventions.
A detour involving Brooke’s neighbors is the film’s only true bond at Christmas, as the rest of the story does not depend on the holiday. It’s also one of the strangest parts of The Knight Before Christmas, as the solution to a single parent’s struggle to care for their children is to give him generous gifts instead of looking for longer-term solutions to their financial instability. The neighbor, who flirts with Cole, is barely present, as Cole only has eyes for Brooke. But she’s still exposed to a brief sleaze, Brooke Cole contemptuously tells her that she’s been voted the “biggest flirt” in high school.
These little details, good and bad, are the points that stand out at the end of The Knight Before Christmas as the rest of the movie follows a worn path. Will Brooke ever believe in love again? Will Cole decide to leave or stay if they have the choice? Is Christmas the best time of the year? The answers are already obvious.
The Knight Before Christmas is now being streamed to Netflix.
