These days, Christmas movies, broadly and charitably defined, seem to be synonymous with the brassy, hokey, sickly sweet sort of fare that has a permanent home on the Hallmark Channel and is in perpetual rotation on Netflix. But the slop being served on Netflix — Falling for Christmas, Best. Christmas. Ever!, Christmas with You, to name a sampling — is in no way representative of a genre with a long and honorable tradition. Classic films such as Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, and the final quarter of Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You are not only set during the season but also use their tinselled Christmastime setting as a kind of reflecting pool for their characters’ hopes and woes, especially of the romantic sort. Surely nothing is sadder than Christmas in a state of solitude, and nothing more fervently wished for than Christmas in the company of another.
Jay Duplass’s new comedy, The Baltimorons, is not in the league of those masterpieces, but, with the admirable exception of 2023’s The Holdovers, it is the closest thing to a fully and richly realized Christmas movie in recent memory. The film, which largely unfolds on Christmas Eve, has a wonderful sense of the dying light of a late December day, the transition from a shade of damp gray to the inky black of night, and, even better, an actual sense of a particular American place. As the title suggests, the film is set in Baltimore, whose landmarks, neighborhoods, underpasses, and professional football team are well evoked.
For a film to get its atmosphere and setting right is a good sign that it may get its humor and heart right, too. Happily, this proves to be the case. Michael Strassner, who co-wrote the film with Duplass, stars as Cliff, a physically maladroit, mildly depressive but sweet-natured man whose thick beard and portly bearing suggest Lord of the Rings-era Peter Jackson. As the film opens, Cliff has reached the six-month mark of his sobriety following an unseen but frequently referenced drunk driving incident. Somehow, Cliff’s girlfriend, Brittany (Olivia Luccardi), has yoked Cliff’s alcoholism to his long-standing aspiration to become an improvisational sketch comedian, of which she disapproves. Thus, Brittany has forbidden Cliff to return to the sketch comedy scene and, presumably, has prevailed upon him to seek the pedestrian new profession he is studying for: mortgage broker.
Yet the film is not so simple-minded as to flat-out dismiss Brittany’s perspective: She clearly cares for and worries over Cliff, who, like so many males his age, looks like he could use some mothering. Even so, Strassner is engaging enough for us to suspect, even in these early scenes, that Cliff is withholding some part of himself in furtherance of his relationship with Brittany. It’s essentially the same dynamic that existed between Cary Grant and his prim, humorless fiancée in Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby, before the ferociously untamed Katharine Hepburn came into the picture.
Of course, The Baltimorons is no more interested in presenting a case for its protagonist’s pending marriage to a dullard than was Bringing Up Baby. Here, Cliff makes the acquaintance of his Katharine Hepburn, Liz Larsen, in an invigoratingly original plot twist: With his head buried in texting, Cliff slams into the front of the house of Brittany’s mother, who has been preparing a spread for Christmas. Dental loss, or near-loss, ensues: A tooth, or at least its crown, comes flying out of Cliff’s mouth. Providentially, Cliff locates a dentist willing to take on the urgent case: Didi (Larsen), a middle-aged divorcee whose own Christmas Eve has taken an unpromising turn with the news that her ex-husband has conscripted most of their family, including their grown daughter, to attend a reception for him and his new wife.
The shambling Cliff and the spiky Didi make for an odd couple. When Cliff first presents his dislodged tooth fragment to Didi, she shoots back: “Hang on to it, will ya?” Inside, clinging to a bloodied towel like a child, Cliff expresses extreme discomfort in the presence of needles, which Didi coolly addresses by subduing him with nitrous oxide. While he is in the process of becoming happily numb, she takes phone calls related to her precarious family situation. A temporary filling is placed, and a follow-up appointment for Monday is made. Those well-versed in cinematic tropes will know that these two are bound to spend time together outside of the dental office.
Sure enough, upon being discharged, Cliff walks out to a missing car: It has been towed, and Didi proposes that she drive him to the lot to retrieve it. If Didi were not at loose ends herself, she probably would not have offered transportation to a first-time patient with a strange sense of humor. And were it not Christmas Eve, when society and its rules seem to wind down and give way to joy, charity, and contentment, she definitely would not have helped free Cliff from the lot, which, amid his attempted theft of his own vehicle, has been locked and in which he is trapped.
Larsen makes Didi’s absurd actions feel credible, something a woman frustrated with her own life would do, in haste, on behalf of another. Her patience is tested when Cliff obnoxiously tries to guess the name of her daughter — Dominique? Raquel? — and when he insists that she sample his homemade sweet potato casserole with pecans and marshmallows, but we can see that this pair, so unalike in so many ways, has chemistry.
By the same token, Cliff is taking a calculated risk in continually seeking to involve Didi in his exploits — asking her to dinner, managing to tag along with her to her ex-husband’s get-together, and generally refusing to let her go home. This is a risk because Cliff, of course, is already betrothed to the appealingly sensible Brittany. But he senses that Didi, older and more cynical though she is, appreciates him more fully. At one point, Cliff hears from Brittany that the dinner he was supposed to attend with her mother has proceeded in his absence. But later, he spots Didi indulging in his sweet potato casserole without her being aware that he is looking on. Perhaps the best way to judge a possible mate is whether he or she enjoys your home cooking outside of your presence.
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The film is full of such commonsensical insights about people and their affairs. And by the time that Cliff and Didi attend a pop-up improvisational show, and Cliff cajoles Didi into joining him onstage, it is obvious that their romance has, in a sense, been consummated. The notion of sketch comedy, of all things, as a guide to life, that its lack of a safety net is a metaphor for how to live, is niche and peculiar. But for the purposes of the film, it works.
All of Cliff and Didi’s adventures take place under the cover of darkness, but the Christmas atmosphere remains pervasive: Lights adorn trees, references are made to Santa Claus, and the specter of the morning, with all its promise, looms. Above all, the film is simply very funny. “Wow,” Cliff says upon being taken to Didi’s townhouse, “you must have good credit.” Will these two oddballs, thrust together by a dental emergency on a night that commends peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, maintain a friendship? Will they strive for a relationship even after the weather warms and the days lengthen? On Christmas Eve, it all seems possible.
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.