Misfortune seemed his lot
Single All the Way might be Netflix’s first gay Christmas rom-com, but let’s not bother to be impressed by anyone’s first gay anything. The LGBTQ community has been so systematically ignored by the entertainment industry for so long that you’ll stumble across a “first” if you put in even a modicum of effort. The only record Hollywood has totally covered is “first eye contact with an object of desire that implies a character is gay without actually saying it.” More importantly, it’s Netflix’s first Christmas rom-com of 2021 that was made by someone with a goal to be anything more than bare-minimum competent.
That’s not to say it’s not bland or cookie-cutter. That is, indeed, the entire raison d’etre of these things. This particular entry follows Peter (Michael Urie), a… social media photographer? It seems to be more of a marketing job than a “something something Internet” job like Nina Dobrev in Love Hard, but it’s still more than a little mystifying. Anyway, he’s excited to take his new boyfriend home for the holidays because his family is constantly putting pressure on him to get into a solid long-term relationship. When his relationship ends just days before his trip, he enlists his best friend and roommate Nick (Philemon Chambers) to come with him and pretend that they fell in love so his family can get off his back. Psychotically, he makes Nick pay for his own plane ticket, ignoring the golden rule that if you’re enlisting your best friend to abandon his Christmas plans, leave his dog behind, and gaslight your family, you should at least pay for it.
Nick’s job is an even more byzantine labyrinth of wonders. He’s the author of an extremely popular children’s book about a dog, but writer’s block is preventing him from creating the sequel (as is true of all authors, he cannot write things if they do not happen to him: see A Castle for Christmas) so now he’s doing TaskRabbit. He doesn’t seem to realize you can tell the app what times you’re available to do tasks for people, however, and he is apparently at the mercy of whoever demands he do chores for them at any time, day or night.
When they arrive at his parents’ (Kathy Najimi and Barry Bostwick) home, Peter finds out that his mom has arranged a blind date with the gym’s new trainer James (Luke Macfarlane). Nick scraps the fake boyfriend plan immediately and spends time with Peter’s family while he goes on dates and slowly begins to realize that maybe he was in love with his best friend the entire time, don’tcha know.
Single All the Way commits all of the standard sins of the Netflix “Hallmark with a budget” model. It clearly doesn’t understand how personal finance works (a climactic Christmas present must have cost - bare minimum - $12,000), recognizable human behavior is not considered a virtue, and it favors lusting after cozy sweaters over any sort of sexual chemistry between any two humans onscreen. Half the cast has even been pilfered from the hallowed halls of Hallmark (say that five times fast) - including consummate leading man Luke Macfarlane, who is gay in real life and probably had a blast not pretending to be in love with Candace Cameron Bure or Erin Krakow for like three seconds.
But here’s the thing. Netflix got the good ones. For instance, Kathy Najimi and Barry Bostwick are both incredible and both Hallmark stalwarts, because actors of a certain age can only play parents in TV movies. Compound them with charismatic newcomer Philemon Chambers, Schitt’s Creek’s Jennifer Robertson in an electrifying turn as Peter’s weird sister, and Jennifer Fucking Coolidge as the pageant-obsessed Aunt Sandy, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success. Coolidge even manages to channel her anarchic improv energy into a focused character, which is not usually something she usually does these days for projects in which she has only ten minutes of screentime.
Plus, all of these actors are applying their skills to a script that miraculously isn’t a steaming pile of dogshit. It’s not particularly sharp, but when you’re grading on the Netflix Christmas scale, the fact that there are jokes that are recognizable as humor and sometimes even actually funny is an A+. Also, within the twee confines of the genre it’s embodying, Chad Hodge’s script does clearly have a sense of a certain type of gay experience that a straight screenwriter just wouldn’t have been able to embody. Peter is a “plant gay” for one thing, which I’m pretty sure straight people haven’t heard of. There’s also a tendency for Peter to be femme in a more authentic way than the “Just Jack!” queens that populate sitcoms. He’s the type of gay man who will casually quote Madeline Kahn in Clue without breaking a sweat, which is much closer to the people I actually know in real life. The “family that overcorrects to being so pro-gay it’s actively embarrassing” angle is also incredibly relatable (again, for a very specific queer experience - there is a vast and frequently terrifying spectrum of family reactions out there).
The script also makes the wise choice to drop the Big Lie angle immediately, because unless the film promises to become a door-slamming farce in the third act, it always turns out unbearable to watch. However, it is confusing why it was even included in the first place. The way they continue to talk about being Fake Boyfriends throughout the movie leads me to believe that it was originally a much bigger part of the story before a major rewrite, so it’s not wholly organic, but I’ll take what I can get.
All told, Single All the Way is a rather shocking success for Netflix, which has had a singularly egregious roster of films this holiday season. It must be taken in the context of the type of film Netflix requires its holiday slate to deliver, but for what it is, it’s a high-water mark of filmmaking prowess. The gulf in quality between this and something like The Princess Switch 3 is as wide as Luke Macfarlane’s shoulders.
That’s not to say it’s not bland or cookie-cutter. That is, indeed, the entire raison d’etre of these things. This particular entry follows Peter (Michael Urie), a… social media photographer? It seems to be more of a marketing job than a “something something Internet” job like Nina Dobrev in Love Hard, but it’s still more than a little mystifying. Anyway, he’s excited to take his new boyfriend home for the holidays because his family is constantly putting pressure on him to get into a solid long-term relationship. When his relationship ends just days before his trip, he enlists his best friend and roommate Nick (Philemon Chambers) to come with him and pretend that they fell in love so his family can get off his back. Psychotically, he makes Nick pay for his own plane ticket, ignoring the golden rule that if you’re enlisting your best friend to abandon his Christmas plans, leave his dog behind, and gaslight your family, you should at least pay for it.
Nick’s job is an even more byzantine labyrinth of wonders. He’s the author of an extremely popular children’s book about a dog, but writer’s block is preventing him from creating the sequel (as is true of all authors, he cannot write things if they do not happen to him: see A Castle for Christmas) so now he’s doing TaskRabbit. He doesn’t seem to realize you can tell the app what times you’re available to do tasks for people, however, and he is apparently at the mercy of whoever demands he do chores for them at any time, day or night.
When they arrive at his parents’ (Kathy Najimi and Barry Bostwick) home, Peter finds out that his mom has arranged a blind date with the gym’s new trainer James (Luke Macfarlane). Nick scraps the fake boyfriend plan immediately and spends time with Peter’s family while he goes on dates and slowly begins to realize that maybe he was in love with his best friend the entire time, don’tcha know.
Single All the Way commits all of the standard sins of the Netflix “Hallmark with a budget” model. It clearly doesn’t understand how personal finance works (a climactic Christmas present must have cost - bare minimum - $12,000), recognizable human behavior is not considered a virtue, and it favors lusting after cozy sweaters over any sort of sexual chemistry between any two humans onscreen. Half the cast has even been pilfered from the hallowed halls of Hallmark (say that five times fast) - including consummate leading man Luke Macfarlane, who is gay in real life and probably had a blast not pretending to be in love with Candace Cameron Bure or Erin Krakow for like three seconds.
But here’s the thing. Netflix got the good ones. For instance, Kathy Najimi and Barry Bostwick are both incredible and both Hallmark stalwarts, because actors of a certain age can only play parents in TV movies. Compound them with charismatic newcomer Philemon Chambers, Schitt’s Creek’s Jennifer Robertson in an electrifying turn as Peter’s weird sister, and Jennifer Fucking Coolidge as the pageant-obsessed Aunt Sandy, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success. Coolidge even manages to channel her anarchic improv energy into a focused character, which is not usually something she usually does these days for projects in which she has only ten minutes of screentime.
Plus, all of these actors are applying their skills to a script that miraculously isn’t a steaming pile of dogshit. It’s not particularly sharp, but when you’re grading on the Netflix Christmas scale, the fact that there are jokes that are recognizable as humor and sometimes even actually funny is an A+. Also, within the twee confines of the genre it’s embodying, Chad Hodge’s script does clearly have a sense of a certain type of gay experience that a straight screenwriter just wouldn’t have been able to embody. Peter is a “plant gay” for one thing, which I’m pretty sure straight people haven’t heard of. There’s also a tendency for Peter to be femme in a more authentic way than the “Just Jack!” queens that populate sitcoms. He’s the type of gay man who will casually quote Madeline Kahn in Clue without breaking a sweat, which is much closer to the people I actually know in real life. The “family that overcorrects to being so pro-gay it’s actively embarrassing” angle is also incredibly relatable (again, for a very specific queer experience - there is a vast and frequently terrifying spectrum of family reactions out there).
The script also makes the wise choice to drop the Big Lie angle immediately, because unless the film promises to become a door-slamming farce in the third act, it always turns out unbearable to watch. However, it is confusing why it was even included in the first place. The way they continue to talk about being Fake Boyfriends throughout the movie leads me to believe that it was originally a much bigger part of the story before a major rewrite, so it’s not wholly organic, but I’ll take what I can get.
All told, Single All the Way is a rather shocking success for Netflix, which has had a singularly egregious roster of films this holiday season. It must be taken in the context of the type of film Netflix requires its holiday slate to deliver, but for what it is, it’s a high-water mark of filmmaking prowess. The gulf in quality between this and something like The Princess Switch 3 is as wide as Luke Macfarlane’s shoulders.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Categories: netflix originals
