COURTESY OF NETFLIX
It s Christmas, and a mustachioed Keegan Michael-Key is leading a musical number in a green top hat and matching waistcoat. It s Christmas, and one Vanessa Hudgens is plotting to undo the other two Vanessa Hudgenses. It s Christmas, and Dolly Parton is floating on a small, glittering cloud.
With the arrival of Netflix’s latest holiday slate (including the sublime
Jingle Jangle,
The Princess Switch: Switched Again, and
Dolly Parton s Christmas on the Square, referenced above), the Christmas movie has reached its logical endgame. Perhaps inevitably, over the decades, the classics like
White Christmas and
It’s a Wonderful Life were exposed to the pressure and heat of fandom, loved harder and harder each annual cable marathon, crystallizing into the sparkling essence of holiday cheer and that essence is, essentially, camp.