Written by Chad Hodge
Directed by Michael Mayer
Peter: "This is the best present ever."
Ah, Netflix. It only took you a year to get into the gay Christmas romance spirit and after rival studios gave us treats such as Happiest Season and Dashing In December to name the two obvious ones, the question remained: could this one deliver? Well, let's see, shall we?
Our protagonist of the piece was Peter (Michael Urie) - a social media guy who had more of an affinity for plants that he did with Instagram. Then there was his best friend Nick (Philemon Chambers), both a handyman and author of a children's book based on his dog, Emmett. We don't get to see a lot of Emmett in this movie, so that's a minus I'm afraid.
As for Peter and Michael, it's somewhat apparent that the two of them are in love with each other. Every other character can see it but them and every other character isn't afraid to point out the obvious. They're also not afraid to do their level best to push Peter and Nick together. Most of these people also being Peter's family.
Peter had the great idea of bringing Nick home for Christmas to meet the family. Pete's mother, the rather festive Carole (Kathy Najimy) also thought it would be fun to set Peter up with handsome personal trainer James (Luke Macfarlane). As a character, I did like James but even he could see that Peter and Nick were meant to be, so needless to say, James felt more of a diversion than too much of an obstacle for the budding couple.
As for Peter's family, well I definitely think they filled out some tropes here. You had his father, Harold (Barry Bostwick), sisters Lisa (Jennifer Robertson) and Ashleigh (Melanie Leishman) as well as their kids pushing for Peter and Nick in the way that you'd only see in a romcom. Not to mention, Peter's aunt Sandy (Jennifer Coolidge) who also brought the two together by getting them to work on her rather bonkers Christmas pageant titled Jesus H. Christ. As a family unit, they were definite'y entertaining and fortunately not too overdone as supporting characters.
However, the main point of this movie was seeing Peter and Nick actually getting together and this movie didn't disappoint in that regard. Both Michael Urie and Philemon Chambers did a good job making me want to root for Peter and Nick as a couple and had rather strong chemistry together. Overall, the movie did what it needed to do with the two of them.
- At the start of the movie, Peter was briefly in a relationship with Tim (Steve Lund) who turned out to have a wife.
- We had influencers such as Kyle Krieger and Max Emerson more or less playing themselves for Peter's razor photoshoot.
- Standout music: Britney Spears My Only Wish (This Year) and Dan Finnerty's Single All The Way during the closing credits.
- Chronology: Christmas 2021 I presume.
Single All The Way doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel for seasonal romance movies and it's tropes are too predictable but it's a likable movie with likable leads. It's also hopefully not the only time we get this type of movie from Netflix as well. I'm also hoping we get more of Philemon Chambers because of this movie.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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