‘Jingle Bell Heist’ Review: Two Aggrieved Strangers Plot a Payback Crime in Amiable Netflix Romantic Comedy
There’s less Christmas cheer than anti-Scrooge snark in “Jingle Bell Heist,” a lightweight crime caper doubling as yuletide romantic comedy. Cinematographer-turned-director Michael Fimognari, assuming both roles here, lends a pleasing look and pace to this London-set tale of two strangers uniting to rob a retail magnate during the busy holiday season. There’s a bearable level of contrivance in Abby McDonald and Amy Reed’s screenplay, as well as sufficiently appealing leads in Olivia Holt and Connor Swindells. Arriving the day before Thanksgiving, this Netflix joint isn’t likely to become anyone’s long-term seasonal fave. But it’s a pleasant diversion that springs some decent twists en route to its happy ending.
After a brief prologue that sees the protagonists about to commence their inside job on Christmas Eve, we jump two weeks, before they’d met. Philly-raised Sophie (Holt) has moved to the U.K. for the free healthcare — her mother (Natasha Joseph), a native Brit, is gravely ill. When not visiting the hospital, she’s a sales clerk at Sterling’s Department Store, then moonlights at a pub. She has a bit of a Robin Hood attitude, as glimpsed early on when she pickpockets an ill-tempered man to give his money to the sidewalk buskers he’d chased away. That impulse extends to dealing with occasional rude customers at her day gig, where the coworkers are nice but the boss, family-business heir Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz), is one nasty cold fish.
Nor is that man beloved by Nick (Swindells), who’s staying in a mate’s (Michael Salami) flat and working at an electronics repair shop while he “gets back on his feet” following a prison stint. What got him handed that sentence (and cost him his marriage) was a conviction for robbing Sterling’s store, after he’d been hired to install its surveillance system. But eventually we glean that was a frame-up. In any case, Nick retains access to that system, such that he catches Sophie pulling a larcenous fast one on-camera. He uses that knowledge to try coercing her into a dual theft effort. She flatly refuses, until a doctor suggests that her mum will now require advanced treatment that can only be accessed in a timely fashion through the pricey, private medical sector. So Sophie decides she’s in, after all.
Their initially squabbling partnership benefits from different forms of expertise, including the talent for trickery she learned from a grandfather who happened to be both a magician and locksmith. But neither are exactly criminal masterminds, leading to some clumsy intel-seeking cosplay at a Santa-themed party for grownups, then a high-end charity gala. At the latter, socially inept Nick manages to make a conquest of Maxwell’s wife Cynthia (Lucy Punch), who’s disgruntled enough to appoint herself a third plotter against her own husband.
None of this intrigue is terribly inspired, let alone credible, but it’s handled with a certain panache. Fimognari, who’s shot most of Mike Flanagan’s considerably darker-toned projects, eschews the usual overbright Christmas comedy aesthetic for a burnished veneer. He and his design collaborators flatter both London exteriors and luxe interiors without making the production look too much like a consumerist wish-list. Humor is underlined via some zoom-lensing and other visual punctuations, as well as Steve Hackman’s busy, antic score — in addition to the expected mixtape of Christmassy various-artists tracks, here running a less familiar gamut from Run-DMC to indie rockers Low.
If chemistry between Disney child star turned scream queen Holt (“Heart Eyes,” “Totally Killer”) and Swindells (of Netflix series “Sex Education”) never quite heats up, they are individually likable, and supported by a strong cast that brings personality to roles of no great written distinction. The script’s mechanizations do pay off in its last lap, when a decent climactic setpiece gives way to a comeuppance that wisely delivers what we really want: not a romantic clinch, but a villain exposed and undone.
