Jingle Bell Heist has not been rated yet, but based on tone and content, the film feels squarely PG-13 for light crime themes, mild language, non-graphic peril, and a few emotionally intense situations.
There’s a question that gets lobbed at critics with surprising regularity, usually with a tone of bafflement: How could you enjoy one movie but not that other one? And every time, it assumes the two films belong in the same conversation. More often than not, they don’t. Plenty of movies chase entirely different ambitions. Think of something like Wicked: For Good, with its mountain of budget and its hunger to be a sweeping musical tragedy about the mechanics of authoritarianism; then compare it to a humble seasonal confection like Netflix’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas. The latter merely wants to be gently heartwarming in a holiday way and it hits that mark. Wicked: For Good, by contrast, strains to be monumental and lands with considerably less grace.
To put it in blunter terms, there’s “good,” and then there’s “good for a Netflix holiday rom-com.” These films demand their own scale a softer, smaller one, calibrated to modest goals rather than the big-screen pursuit of layered characters, elegant plotting, and sumptuous craft. Which is why it’s a bit startling, almost disorienting, that Jingle Bell Heist, Netflix’s latest seasonal romance from director Michael Fimognari, actually delivers all that. It has sharp characters. A nimble script. And cinematography so polished you might forget it’s a streamer holiday flick at all. This isn’t “Netflix holiday rom-com good.” It’s simply, unabashedly, good.
The series follows Olivia Holt, fresh off This Is Not a Test, plays Sophia, a department-store employee who moonlights as a small-time thief. The store is owned by Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz), a man who operates with the exact smugness you expect from someone the film clearly wants you to root against. Sophia’s no hardened criminal; she’s the kind who swipes cash from bullies only to pass it along to the bullied. You can feel the script gently nudging you: She steals, sure but look where her heart points.
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One day she’s slipping money out of the store’s lost-and-found, and she does get caught but not by security. Instead, she’s spotted by Nick (Connor Swindells of William Tell), a guy with a much bigger heist in mind. He leverages her misdeed just enough to rope her into helping him. It’s technically blackmail, but the movie treats it with such a feather-light touch that you can already see the romantic chemistry warming beneath it. The threat is soft-edged; the pull between them isn’t.
Their motivations for crossing legal lines are, in classic rom-com tradition, deeply sympathetic. Sophia’s mother is dying, and even in a country with socialized medicine, the specialized treatment she needs isn’t covered so time and money are both running out. You can almost sense an earlier draft set in the United States, where financial doom in the face of illness is grimly commonplace, not a narrative anomaly.
Nick’s burden is no less heavy: he spent five years in prison because of Sterling’s machinations, a fall that cost him his marriage. Now he’s scrambling to secure enough money to keep his ex-wife from moving away with their daughter. His desperation feels almost tactile. You understand instantly why the film lets us root for this pair of gentle criminals. Jingle Bell Heist knows the audience’s soft spot: stick them in a story where the rich predator gets taken for a sleigh ride, and we’ll gladly cheer.
Serafinowicz weaponizes his charisma to play Sterling like a man born to be on the receiving end of narrative justice. Meanwhile, Holt and Swindells breathe life into a script that, in lesser hands, might have felt like a tidy set of story beats ticking by. They give the film a pulse a sense that the rom-com rhythms and the heist mechanics are connecting on a more emotional wavelength.
Abby McDonald’s screenplay is delightfully precise, weaving together the conventions of holiday romance and caper film with a kind of ease that feels earned, not engineered. In a different year, you could imagine Jingle Bell Heist being paired with something like Heart Eyes, another surprisingly strong genre hybrid a slasher rom-com that also happened to star Holt. Maybe that’s coincidence. Or maybe Holt has developed a radar for scripts that blend flavors other actors would keep separate. If so, more power to her. (And hey, Olivia if you stumble on a cozy holiday romance that doubles as a full-on Scorsese gangster yarn, please let us know. The world deserves that miracle.)
All of this is shaped by Fimognari, who previously helmed the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before sequels and shot gorgeously crafted projects like Doctor Sleep and The Fall of the House of Usher. Here, he’s pulling double duty again directing the romance and photographing it and the result is a movie that looks almost shockingly elegant for its category. The camera glides. The lighting evokes a warm, slightly mysterious glow reminiscent of Eyes Wide Shut’s holiday palette. These choices create a cinematic legitimacy that makes it easier to invest in the stakes. Not that the film isn’t a playful romp it absolutely is but it’s a polished romp with unexpected style.
If every holiday rom-com met the bar set by Jingle Bell Heist, the genre would still be cozy, still be comfort food, but it wouldn’t carry the same dismissive reputation. Fans of these straight-to-streaming seasonal treats will adore it, both for what it is and for how gracefully it rises above expectations. And afterward, when they show it to the skeptics in their lives, they’ll get to wear the tiniest, most satisfying smirk the one that says, See? These movies can be great.
Content Breakdown for Parents
Violence & Intensity: No real violence beyond light scuffling, physical comedy, and heist-related tension.A few moments include security guards and chase sequences, but nothing graphic or frightening.Emotional intensity centers around illness, financial desperation, and custody issues more heartfelt than harsh.
Language: Mild profanity pops up occasionally (“hell,” “damn,” and similar PG-13-level words).No slurs, no aggressive tirades, and the overall tone stays warm and witty.
Sexual Content / Nudity: Romantic tension is front-and-center, but the film keeps things family-friendly.A couple of kisses and flirtatious exchanges, but no nudity or sexual situations.One or two “cute but suggestive” jokes that may sail over younger viewers’ heads.
Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: A few background bar scenes with characters holding drinks.Alcohol is portrayed lightly and without glamorization.No smoking, no drug references.
Parental Concerns: The protagonists are charming criminals, and the movie admits it. Their motives are sympathetic, but it’s still stealing.Discussions about terminal illness and custody may be heavy for sensitive younger viewers.The villain is aggressively unlikeable, which may frustrate younger kids who are sensitive to bullying behavior.The heist involves lying, sneaking, and mild law-breaking, though it isn’t glamorized in a dangerous way.
Matthew Creith is a movie and TV critic based in Denver, Colorado. He’s a member of the Critics Choice Association and GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. He can be found on Twitter: @matthew_creith or Instagram: matineewithmatt. He graduated with a BA in Media, Theory and Criticism from California State University, Northridge. Since then, he’s covered a wide range of movies and TV shows, as well as film festivals like SXSW and TIFF.