Fix: holiday romance, Christmas in New York, pretty pastries, precocious moppets, Zoey Deutch
Platforms: Amazon Prime
Amazon Summary:
Life – like love – is full of surprises and unexpected gifts. In this holiday romance, Something From Tiffany’s, one woman’s life is forever changed by an engagement ring meant for someone else.
FYA Summary:
Gary and Ethan have a dramatic “meet cute” situation when they bump into each other after Christmas shopping at Tiffany’s for their significant others. They end up accidentally leaving with the wrong gift bags and since Ethan bought his girlfriend an engagement ring, and Gary bought his girlfriend earrings, predictable holiday hijinks ensue. Yay! Predictable holiday hijinks are our fave.
Gary’s girlfriend, Rachel, is a baker, as is required by the laws of Christmas movies. She’s not expecting an engagement ring for Christmas, especially once she spends time with hot Ethan and unintentional sparks fly. She might also be our first Jewish holiday movie heroine? This helps make Something From Tiffany’s, based on the book by Melissa Hill, feel like a little less of a Christmas movie and more of a rom-com that just happens to take place during the Christmas season.
Familiar Faces:
Zoey Deutch as Rachel Meyer
You probably know her best from Set It Up (and you should! It’s great.) But I’ve loved her since Vampire Academy. (No, that is not a positive review of the movie. I’m just a Zoey Deutch defender. She is a perfect Rose Hathaway.) Deutch always manages to pull off manic pixie dream girl vibes without being obnoxious about it.
Kendrick Sampson as Ethan Greene
Ethan is a writer, professor, widower, and single dad. This is clearly holiday romance bingo. He’s charming and swoony, and he loves bread. He might be the perfect man. Sampson previously did a stint on Vampire Diaries (the college years) and more recently was on Insecure.
Ray Nicholson as Gary Wilson
Gary is Rachel’s long-time tattoo-artist boyfriend. He isn’t a bad guy, but he also isn’t quite the person she thinks he is. Previously seen in Licorice Pizza and in the Amazon Prime adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s Panic, in which he was an intense scene-stealer, but also seemed way too old to be playing in a high-stakes scavenger hunt with high schoolers.
Shay Mitchell as Vanessa
Shay, from our beloved and bonkers Pretty Little Liars, has the thankless role of the existing girlfriend who’s too married to her career to be good stepmother material, per the rom-com bylaws. But really, she just doesn’t want to move back to New York winters and I can hardly blame her.
Leah Jeffries as Daisy
Daisy is Ethan’s adorable and insanely well-adjusted daughter. He’s dragged her across the country and back and is poised to give her a new stepmother that knows so little about kids that she gave her an affirmation journal for Christmas, and she’s still not a brat! Leah can also be seen this year in Beast with Idris Elba, and besides being crazy cute, she’s a really confident performer with a solid presence. She’ll be starring in next year’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Couch-Sharing Capability: Cozy
For sure watch this with any significant other that you’re expecting jewelry from at some point. This can be a teaching moment. Feel free to watch this one alone when you’re zoned out on the sofa in a Chrismukkah coma. But I’d say this is a perfect choice for a night in with friends (pair it with this holiday classic that my bestie and I have built an annual tradition around). Then you have someone sitting next to you to guffaw with when they put poor Zoey Deutch in one of the worst denim prairie blouses I have ever seen. Or someone to agree with you that Rachel’s gay bestie/business partner absolutely should get her own spin-off movie.
Recommended Level of Inebriation: Toasty
You’re going to need a drink. Especially when you have to join Rachel in pretending to be oblivious enough to think that her bodega bouquet-buying boyfriend has giant engagement ring from Tiffany’s money. Have you seen the markup on their rocks? It’s bananas. To be appropriately thematic, you should really opt for hot cocoa. The generous splash of Bailey’s is optional but highly recommended. And all the bread in this movie is definitely going to make you hungry, so you should also throw in a pastry made with a shit-ton of butter.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: Sparkly New Bauble
It’s so exciting that streaming services have gotten into the Christmas movie biz. They have much higher production values and casting budgets than Hallmark. Plus, they get to swear! And you have to love Christmas in NYC. No, you have to, it’s one of the laws of rom-coms. Everyone has attractive overcoats and cozy-looking scarves and hats. No one ever has a runny nose or gross sleet-flattened hair. It’s a true Christmas miracle.
Something From Tiffany’s is a fun addition to the veritable fleet of holiday romances we’re inundated with this time of year. The glossier sheen and higher caliber of actors than the cable channels can manage sets this one apart. I really loved the natural chemistry the actors had, as well as the effort at more diverse casting and inclusive storytelling. Cheers to more of that in the new year!
Just watched this with friends a few days ago, and poor Vanessa really got the short end of the stick. I kept expecting her to secretly be doing something evil so the movie could justify being so mean to her. Daisy and the gay BFF (I don’t remember her name) were the absolute best.
Everybody just had stellar chemistry and impeccable comic timing.
“Something from Tiffany’s” – a movie that should have been a heartwarming holiday rom-com, but ended up being a hot mess of infidelity and questionable morals. Seriously, what were Rachel and Ethan thinking? They both had perfectly fine relationships with Gary and Vanessa, but decided to throw it all away for a cheap fling? And don’t even get me started on Rachel’s painfully cookie-cutter manic pixie dream girl persona. Ugh.
But the real victim here is Gary. He didn’t deserve to be treated like that by Rachel. And let’s not forget about poor Vanessa, who was just trying to enjoy her vacation with Ethan. Instead, she gets the shock of her life when she finds out about the betrayal.
In short, “Something from Tiffany’s” was a complete disappointment. If you want to watch a movie that glorifies cheating and features two-dimensional characters, then go ahead and give it a watch. But if you value loyalty and complex character development, you might want to skip this one.
I think that Something from Tiffany’s is a great escape movie. We have our 2 nice guy heroines : Rachel and Ethan so mismatched with Gary & Vanessa , that the meeting and match made in heaven is the real Christmahannuka gift and the most pleasurable expected dessert of this movie .