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Netflix kicks off its holiday movie lineup with Holidate, a not-just-Christmas romcom starring Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey as a mismatched pair just trying to get through every single holiday. But hold up—this holiday movie is rated TV-MA?! That alone implies we’re in for way more than the quirky and cute holiday movies we’ve gotten in past years. The question is: is Holidate a one night stand or the kinda movie you’re gonna wanna watch again and again?

HOLIDATE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Emma Roberts (American Horror Story) and Luke Bracey (Little Fires Everywhere) star as sexy singles with a shared problem: they are both sick of being single at every holiday function. So, after a chance encounter at a mall (*sigh* remember malls…?), they hatch a plan to be each other’s plus ones at every holiday function for the next calendar year. What can go wrong? Or, more importantly, what can go right?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Take a Hallmark Christmas movie (specifically 2018’s hilariously titled Mingle All the Way) and filter it through TV comedies like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or You’re the Worst and you get Holidate. This is a holiday romcom that knows it’s a holiday romcom and pretends that it hates being a holiday romcom (but deep down it loves being a holiday romcom).

Performance Worth Watching: Listen: you can’t put Kristin Chenoweth in any scene and expect her to just leave it sitting there. She is gonna steal that scene! Chenoweth does that with slutty gusto as the hilariously horny Aunt Susan. She’s the one who coins the term “holidate”!

Memorable Dialogue: The very first line of dialogue sets the tone for the entire movie. Out on the decked AF front porch, a bundled-up Sloane takes one final drag off he cigarette and mutters to herself, “Fucking holidays.”

A Holiday Tradition: There’s nothing unusual here, like the annual mall concerts or trivia nights or charity galas or ornament competitions that you always see in the Hallmark Christmas movies. It’s just the regular ol’ holiday traditions—all of them for all the holidays.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: Duh, and it definitely makes more sense than Mingle All the Way!

Sex and Skin: While there’s no full-on nudity (it is a holiday romcom, after all), there is a brief sex scene that goes further than anything you’ll see in a cable Christmas movie this year just by existing.

Our Take: Netflix’s holiday movie lineup is off to a bold start with Holidate, a movie that more than lives up to its mature audiences rating thanks to some of the filthiest Christmas jokes I’ve ever heard. But the fact that Holidate pulls off being legitimately bawdy while not losing the jolly is worth a lot of praise. It’s a fine line to walk, making a dirty Christmas movie that doesn’t feel like it’s skating by on contrasting the most wholesome holiday with the crassest jokes. Holidate does that, every single time.

That’s due to Roberts and Bracey, who are the real deal. Seriously—they bring relatable grit and groans to all of their holiday humbuggery. They make Sloane and Jackson feel like real, complicated people and not just the all-business or all-smiles Christmas cutouts we usually get in these kinds of movies.

It also helps that the film’s premise means that we cycle through an entire year’s worth of holiday vibes, not just the Christmas ones. We see Sloane and Jackson on Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day—even Easter, which includes one of the funniest visual/song pairings I’ve seen in a film. This shifting scenery lets the movie be its own messy thing and more than just the usual holiday love story.

But don’t get it twisted, because Holidate is very much a holiday love story. This movie knows the tropes and it goes through the tropes, and it even uses the tropes to make big character choices. We love a self-aware romcom, especially one packed with as many genuine LOL moments as this one.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Holidate proves that Netflix can do way more than just bang out the kind of fluffy Christmas comedies you see on cable. Let this warts-and-all romantic comedy be the start of a new Netflix tradition.