Originally published in December 2021.
The Rom/Com is king, we know this. Where would we be without Nora Ephron’s storytelling or Nancy Meyers’ kitchens? We can certainly keep telling our tales—it’s not like Netflix is ever going to get full or anything. I love a romantic story that is also funny. Indeed, I can only endure romantic stories if there are jokes folded into the batter. But I’ve seen enough love stories featuring people in their 20s and 30s to last a lifetime, because they assume that the only part of our lifetime that can include falling in love is far too narrow.
A Castle For Christmas is a recently released Netflix original film staring Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes. At a high level, it’s your classic Christmas movie with romantic love as a central theme. Two people who are super likely to fall in love are portrayed as two people who can’t stand each other for some very thin reason, and through repeated exposure and maybe some clever intervention from satellite characters, we go out on a very predictable ending. You don’t watch these things to be challenged. You watch them so something can be on in the background while you eat peppermint bark.
Why would I bother to tell you to watch this one movie in particular, among its thousands of siblings? Because it breaks a few molds ripe for the smashing. Also it’s set in Scotland, come on.
It’s a 50+ love story.
Brooke Shields is 56 years old, and Cary Elwes is 59. THANK GOD. Oh, two super young and conventionally hot people fall in love because one of them came home for Christmas and somehow inherited an inn? Groundbreaking. Can we please start caring about love past the having-babies years? While we’re at it, can we un-ironically celebrate that love and make it feel just as fresh and valid as the love we freak out about and “ship” as long as no one’s turned 35 yet?
The woman is the rich one.
You know what, I’m here for a “dude in distress” story with a rich woman who’s a successful author helping him out of life-altering financial trouble. I like it! I think we have enough stories of women being saved or kept by rich men, no? That narrative needs to go both ways, because life does. I also love that this movie didn’t even dip one toe into the “man intimidated by woman’s money” waters because that can go die in a fire. If you’re still a man who’s intimidated by a woman’s money or success and you take it out on her instead of going inward and working on these limiting feelings of yours, I don’t care if you have a Merry Christmas or not.
Her friends span all ages.
It always seemed a little too convenient to me that (again, young and hot) women always had best friends their own age with remarkably similar lifestyles and interests just baked right into their daily existence by conveniently sitting next to them at work. That doesn’t happen. At least not with the frequency it’s portrayed in films. Sure, I’ve had colleagues I like, but none of them are risking their next promotion to talk me through my dating strategy and devote half their day to a love life that’s not their own. In A Castle For Christmas, we see the main character make friends with a knitting circle (I know) full of characters of all ages and interests. I love a multi-generational, multi-gender friend group and I don’t see it often enough.
Everyone has “baggage,” we’re human.
I think part of the reason we focus so intently on young love is that love hasn’t kicked the snot out of young people 10 times already. I’m so tired of people’s “baggage” leading their love story. What if we were allowed to be hurt or face tough times in the past, and still move forward into new stories for ourselves, too? Our past doesn’t have to define all the stories that are told about us. These moments are allowed to provide growth and education, too—not just the “baggage” tropes that are so often centered in stories of adulthood love. If love is only acceptable to portray in popular culture when in youth, most of love’s real story is being left out. There’s a freshness we assign to love in our 20s and maybe 30s that we assume doesn’t exist for those who fall in love past that time frame. It contributes to the false narrative that people, and certainly women, are “over” past a certain age. The kicker is, once you actually hit “a certain age” you know that life is anything but over. Life is allowed to keep getting better as we age, and I think the stories we tell should reflect that narrative, too.
The drama is minimal.
Honestly I needed this. I needed a story that doesn’t require a CBD tincture to get through and a therapy session to process. Can we just relax already? I really do feel that easily consumable content like Bake Off, Ted Lasso, and A Castle For Christmas will be the way of the future. We are tired, we are drained, we just survived the unfathomable—and for some reason the unfathomable is still not gone. I don’t need more murder documentaries, I need the “easy listening” station for TV, thanks.
I’m ready for more of this. More love stories that move beyond 20s fantasy or boringly overdone life timeliness. Nothing in life or love is predictable—and isn’t that fantastic. Leave predictable to Christmas movie story arcs. It’s kind of their thing.