'HARD TO RESIST' CHRISTMAS MOVIE TOPS STREAMING CHARTS
A brand-new festive film has soared to the top of the streaming charts after being made available for at-home viewing.
Boasting a star-studded cast led by Kiefer Sutherland, Rebel Wilson and Danny Dyer, Tinsel Town follows Sutherland’s Bradley Mack, a fading Hollywood star whose career is on its last gasp.
After taking the other gig his agent can get him, Mack thinks he’s heading to England for some reputation-reviving theatre – only to find himself in a Yorkshire town’s panto production of Cinderella, playing Buttons.
A far-fetched but ripe-for-comedy premise, Tinsel Town also stars Sir Derek Jacobi, Jason Manford, Katherine Ryan, Maria Friedman, Alice Eve, Asim Chaudhry, Mawaan Rizwan, Meera Syal and Lucien Laviscount.
Fans have branded the new Christmas film, directed by Fisherman’s Friends filmmaker Chris Foggin, ‘hard to resist’ and urged people that it’s ‘worth a watch’.
Tinsel Town has been trending in the UK since its release on Sky Cinema and NOW in the UK, beating back the likes of The Grinch and Love Actually on the platform’s most-watched movies list.
‘Tinsel Town is a great Christmas film, love letter to panto and THE Maria Friedman is in it, loved it,’ announced Jenny on X, while another fan echoed her praise, describing the film as ‘an absolute cheese fest’ – clearly in the best possible way.
Meanwhile a user calling himself ‘Christmas George’ for the festive season rated Tinsel Town a ‘9/10’ and added: ‘You can tell they had fun making this movie and it’s quite lovely.’
If you weren’t getting the vibes already of the kind of cosy gentle comedy this is, Anna branded it ‘silly and predictable but very festive and enjoyable’.
There was praise too for leading man Sutherland and his willingness to wholeheartedly commit to the fish-out-of-water Hollywood diva role.
‘Kiefer Sutherland just threw himself in and was great,’ noted Steve as another fan admitted to watching the movie ‘expecting to hate it’, but enjoying it instead as ‘I do have a soft spot for Kiefer, always my favourite vampire’, a reference to his 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys.
‘Great Xmas movie that is destined to become a classic. Kiefer makes it all work with his performance. Highly recommend!’ added Derek R in an audience review on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
Some critics were also overcome with warm festive feelings toward Tinsel Town, as The Hollywood Reporter’s review agreed: ‘Sutherland makes it all work, delivering a thoroughly winning performance that makes you buy into the overall hokum.’
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‘Seeing Kiefer Sutherland embrace the madness of a British play is a unique delight, playing to Sutherland’s charm while also embracing the simplicity of the premise,’ added Collider (whose critic we’ll politely remind that this is a ‘pantomime’ specifically and not just a play).
‘It’s stuffed to the brim with genre clichés, but a funny script, committed performances, and warm playful tone make this festive comedy hard to resist,’ added critic Kat Halstead.
Others found themselves less charmed though, with a few viewers on Rotten Tomatoes claiming it was the worst Christmas film they’d seen.
Tea reckoned it was ‘impressively bad’, while others brought up Tinsel Town’s predictability – which was considered both an unwatchable negative as well as an element that others could embrace – or at least, happily ignore.
Is Tinsel Town worth your time? A film critic's verdict
By Tori Brazier
Tinsel Town is exactly what it, slightly confusingly, sets out to be – a Christmas-themed comedy with a hint of romance and slice of action.
Is it a triumph of a festive flick? No. But it does have a bafflingly good cast and a script that delivers actual jokes on occasion.
I’ve seen plenty of new Christmas films this year, from Netflix’s seasonal slate to the most unorthodox Christmas movie in cinemas and Gurinder Chadha’s Dickens retelling Christmas Karma (disappointingly the weakest of the bunch). Tinsel Town is able to measure up among the better.
I didn’t have the highest expectations of this film, so it was nice to be proven wrong. It’s definitely less lazy than the usual Christmas films pumped out, and the pantomime concept at its heart works quite well – and is of course squeezed dry of all its possible juice.
The main credit should go to Kiefer Sutherland though, who fully commits to Tinsel Town with all of his acting muscles, neither afraid to send up his action hero background with Bradley Mack’s endless sequels nor embrace looking the fool as a Yank thoroughly befuddled by panto.
While I don’t think it will go down as a stone-cold seasonal classic, I would actually watch it again – and that’s pretty high praise in terms of the crowded Christmas movies market (there’s only one other new X-mas film that’s made that cut this year).
But I’m afraid much as I usually enjoy her comedy capers, Rebel Wilson’s ‘Yorkshire’ accent truly is as dire as everyone says.
Unfortunately, one part of the movie that did come in for almost unanimous criticism was Australian star Wilson’s ‘insulting’ and ‘dreadful’ Yorkshire accent as local choreographer Jill, who is juggling custody of daughter Cara (played by Robbie Williams’ daughter Theodora) with her dodgy ex Kieran (Dyer).
As with many of these light-hearted festive capers, from Netflix to Prime and Hallmark, it often depends on your mood as to how receptive you’ll be to their tried-and-tested formula.
Tinsel Town is streaming on NOW.
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