A Merry Little Ex-Mas: Will Someone PLEASE Have Sex with Chet?

This year's crop of Netflix Christmas movies is decidedly lacking in star power. In the past, their Christmas offerings have included movies with household names like Lindsay Lohan, Christina Milian, and Brooke Shields. This year, there's only one with recognizable stars: A Merry Little Ex-Mas, with Alicia Silverstone and Melissa Joan Hart. Cher and Clarissa, together at last! You know, as I'm looking at this list of stars, I'm realizing that they were all big in the 90s and early 00s, which means my perception of their stardom might be colored by the fact that I'm getting old. You know you're middle-aged when all the nostalgia media is targeted at you. Which is probably why I decided to watch this one with my best friend, who was right there beside me when I was introduced to Cher and Clarissa in the first place.

Kate Holden (Alicia Silverstone) and Everett Holden (Oliver Hudson) are about to get a divorce. The long-standing problems in their marriage--Everett's workaholism, Kate's dissatisfaction with her career path--have finally come to a head, and they are determined to "consciously uncouple" for the sake of their college-aged children. But Kate has a secret: after Christmas, she plans on selling her beloved home and moving to the big city to follow the dreams she left behind years ago. And it turns out Everett has a secret too: he's started dating Tess (Jameela Jamil), a young, beautiful jetsetter who Kate's children adore. And soon, Kate finds her own love interest in Chet (Pierson Fode) who is the perfect amount of young, dumb, and hot to drive Everett crazy with jealousy. Determined to keep up their facade of a mature divorce, Kate and Everett try to follow all their holiday traditions even as they start to wonder whether this is their last Christmas together after all.

At the end of this movie, I had several outstanding questions. First, does this movie have it out for British people? Tess is British, though she tells us she mostly lives in NYC and just keeps a pied a terre in London, which is phrasing that is designed to make you hate her. She's not evil, really, but she does have terrible taste in men. As she admits, what was she thinking trying to date a small-town doctor? We are also told that daughter Sienna (Emily Hall) is a student at Oxford. She brings home her boyfriend Nigel (Timothy Innes), who is a literal Harry Potter freak. He's wearing HP merch throughout the movie and quotes the series as often as possible. I thought that it was illegal in the year of our lord 2025 to mention Harry Potter without offering the caveat that, of course, J.K. Rowling has turned into a Death Eater-level bigot, and we do not agree with her transphobic stance. But the movie avoids that controversy entirely. I'm forced to conclude that this movie thinks British people have extremely poor judgement and do not deserve love.

Next question: what is the deal with indoor grills? Kate is a staunch environmentalist who makes all her Christmas decorations and only buys clothes from thrift stores. In the past couple of years, I've been making an effort to be more environmentally responsible. We put solar panels on our roof, replaced our yard with low-water plants, and even bought an electric car. So I empathized with Kate's determination to be less wasteful and more aware. At one point, someone mentions that she wouldn't let Everett have an indoor grill, which sent me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if indoor grills are somehow bad for the environment. Like, it uses electricity--isn't that better than charcoal or propane? My best friend then informed me that not only does she have an indoor grill, she has an indoor pizza oven. "I don't care if it's bad for the environment," she opined. "It makes really good pizza."

Third question: why is there not more Melissa Joan Hart? She plays Kate's best friend, who is never without a drink in her hand and has lots of supportive advice for her bestie. MJH produced this movie and has been the star of many insane Hallmark movies, so I would have liked her to have some sort of plot of her own. As it is, the only thing she gets to do is lust after Chet. And why wouldn't she? Chet is insanely hot. Like he was designed in a lab to be hot. I enjoyed Pierson Fode in The Wrong Paris earlier this year, but he's genuinely great in this. He's funny, goofy, and really interested in middle-aged ladies. Which brings me to my fourth question: why isn't anyone having sex with Chet? Everett implies that he and Tess have had sex--bad sex, but sex all the same. This is Kate's one chance to see what she's been missing all these years. Like, Kate, honey, get some! Look at this man!

This made for a fun night snarking with my best friend, but I wouldn't call it a must-watch unless you too are a millennial woman who is just happy to see the stars of your youth working again. You should maybe just watch every scene with Pierson Fode and write a different movie in your head.