Release Year 2019
Director: Monika Mitchell
Writers: Cara J. Russell
Staring: Vanessa Hudgens, Josh Whitehouse and Alex Armbruster as “Young Husband at Tree Farm”
See this movie if... you asked Santa for your very own knight for Christmas and hope you’ll find one under your tree this year.
Don't see this movie if... you know that time travel is the worst plot point used in movies or you have a little understanding of the hygiene of 14th century England.
In November this year, the Netflix Christmas movie team met to discuss a new idea for this year. Let’s take a peek inside this super-secret meeting.
Producer: “OK everybody, let’s get started. We just hit Canadian Thanksgiving, time to start planning our Christmas movies for the year. I know we’re a little early, but we want to do something special this year.”
Writer 1: “What!?! More special than a woman who learns the true meaning of Christmas because of super cheezy letters?”
Writer 2: “More special than Kurt Russell as Santa Claus?”
Writer 3: “More special than people falling in love because of a magical calendar?”
Writer 4: “More special than a commoner who falls in love with a prince at Christmas, or gets married to a prince at Christmas or has a baby at Christmas? Those ideas are Christmas movie gold.”
Producer: “Hey, those are all amazing movies, but we need to ruin, I mean, honour Christmas in a special way.”
Writer 1: “I’ve got it. Time travel! Time travel and Christmas go together perfectly.”
Producer: “I don’t know. It sounds risky. Time Travel can be complicated.”
Writer 2: “No way, it will be perfect. There’s no way it goes wrong.”
Writer 3: “Yeah, think of all the awesome time travel movies Back to the Future 2, Timecop, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure or Black Knight. It’s a sure thing.”
Producer: “OK, but we need to make sure we do it right.”
Writer 4: “Oh for sure. We’ll have a perfect explanation for time travel.”
Writer 5: “And we’ll make sure the characters match their time period.”
Writer 2: “And we’ll make the reason for time travel totally believable.”
Producer: “Ok, as long as we don’t regret this and wish we could go back in time to fix it. Hahahahahahahaha.”
And…..scene.
The Knight Before Christmas is about Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse), a knight from 14th century England. While on the king’s Christmas hawk hunt he runs into a magical old lady he calls “old crone”. While I appreciate the writer’s desire to stay true to the language of the time period, there is no way more than a half dozen people in 2019 know what a crone is and they never explain it. I had to google it. In folklore or fairy tales a crone is an old woman typically with magical abilities. So, good on the writers for using accurate language, but of all the things they could have gotten right, I think this one is the least worthy.
Ok, back to the story, Sir Cole asks the old crone if he can help her find shelter. It’s cold and she must be far from home. He’s such a nice boy so the old crone decides she will help him with his “most important quest”. Sir Cole is confused because he has no idea what his most important quest is and he’s basically a 14th century version of Bill from Bill & Ted. He’s handsome and sweet, but he appears to be a few knights short of a crusade. The slightly clueless Sir Cole is left with only one clue. He must complete his quest before Christmas or he’ll never return. Then poof, Sir Cole is magically transported to 2019 Ohio.
The old crone drops Sir Cole smack dab in the middle of a replica of Santa’s village in small town Ohio. The patrons assume he is part of the show because why not? After all, in the classic Christmas story Santa flies around the world with his two bodyguards, Sir Lacelot and Robin Hood.
While trying to figure out what-in-the-round-table has just happened, Sir Cole runs into Brooke (Vanessa Hudgens). He literally runs into her, so if you’re playing Christmas Movie Bingo, make sure to check your card for “Meet through physical contact”. This includes bumping, touching or extremely strong eye contact.
Anyway, Brooke and Sir Cole share a brief encounter before Brooke goes to hang out with her sister and niece. Brooke must have enjoyed colliding with Sir Cole because just a few minutes later, Brooke runs into him again, only this time she tries to do it right and hits him with her car. Fortunately he is wearing his armour and he is totally unharmed, because 14th century armour was made to withstand getting run over by a Subaru.
The sound of the car hitting the armour must have alerted the police because Office Stevens comes by almost immediately. Officer Stevens offers to take Sir Cole to the hospital to get checked out. The doctors confirms he is A-OK and because of the “no-harm, no-foul” law, Officer Stevens doesn’t even consider giving Brooke a ticket.
During Sir Cole’s brief stay in emergency, Brooke and Officer Stevens learn that Sir Cole is a knight from 14th century England who has been magically transported to Ohio 2019 for a quest. Aoooooga, aooooooga, aoooooga. That is the sound of warning bells that should have scared Brooke off right then and there. More on that later.
Instead, Brooke decides that she needs to give this young, handsome delusional guy a place to stay. After all, she lives alone with a beautiful guest house. What could go wrong? That’s a fake sword in your sheath, right? Brooke figures that in a few days he’ll remember who he really is and won’t be crazy anymore. Here we go again. Another woman thinking she can fix her man.
Will Sir Cole complete his quest? Maybe. Will Sir Cole even learn what his quest is? Probably. Will this movie have an awesome twist where Sir Cole is not really from 14th century England, but is actually crazy? Would be awesome, but that’s a disappointing no. Will Sir Cole learn modern slang and start talking like a valley girl? You’ll have to watch The Knight Before Christmas to find out, but I’m suggesting you don’t.
The Knight Before Christmas has at least one star we know, Vanessa Hudgens, though her star is fading as she continues to do movies like this. It has a new premise, but I tend to stay away from time travel movies. Except for the Avengers, End Game was perfect and don’t you ever say otherwise! Actually, even my precious End Game had holes in it’s time travel, but that’s because time travel isn’t real and isn’t possible so we should stop putting it in movies. Unfortunately, that is all this movie has going for it, which isn’t saying much. I have a few beefs and here we go.
First off, Sir Cole is a 14th century knight transported to 2019 Ohio. Now I’m no expert on 14th century lifestyles, but my guess is that their level of hygiene, cleanliness and style do not match what we would expect in 2019. Sir Cole is clean, handsome, has all his teeth, none of which are black, has amazing, not greasy hair and basically looks like the missing member of One Direction dressed up for Halloween. If he looked like what I imagine a knight from the 14th century would look like then I bet when Brooke bumped into him she wouldn’t be thinking, “Oh brave knight, save this damsel in distress”, but “Get thee hence foul beast!”
For Sir Cole to be at Vanessa Hudgens level I think he would need a Queer Eye make over.
“Sir Knight, we’re going to take you from ‘good night’ to ‘alllllllllll right!”
“Those clothes are so 14th century.”
“Who did your bowl-cut, Friar Tuck?”
“We’ll get you fixed up in a snap, snap, snap. OK, now you snap with me honey. It’s easy, just snap, snap...come on, just snap...snap...SNAP DAMN IT!”
Next up, how is no one but Officer Stevens worried about Sir Cole’s mental health? The dude thinks he is a knight. Brooke may say, “but he has the armour and accent and he so quirky and he’s just so adorable.” Yeah, they are all adorable until they stab your reindeer decorations or a bus or you.
A guy believing he is a 14th century knight should be a deal breaker for any woman. On the levels of deal breakers, it should fall somewhere in between guys who pretend to be a knight from the 14th century and guys who are in a barbershop quartet. But we are in a holi-rom-com so good sense be damned.
As Brooke spends more time with Sir Cole she should become more and more concerned that he isn’t getting better. Instead she becomes more and more enamoured with him and is knight schtick. Stab her reindeer decorations? A knight’s got to practice. Talk about stabbing her ex-boyfriend? He’s just being chivalrous. Drive her car to town and leave it parked askew, door open? Oh, Sir Cole, you so crazy! I get it, knights in the 14th century are cool, but people who think they are a knight in 2019, not so much.
IF are looking for a Christmas movie with a time travel twist or a bounce-back movie for Vanessa Hudgens...you should still probably look somewhere else.
IF you really love our sanitized version of 14th century knights and you want one for Christmas...then you should watch The Knight Before Christmas.
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