Single on the 25th: Movie Review

A movie obsessed with being single but still needing a traditional rom-com.

With Single on the 25th, Hallmark is trying to get more of the single world. After all, younger generations are staying single more and more, so there is probably a bigger market here to reach. However, turning a singles movie into a romance is odd, and there is a fundamental problem here. In general, all Hallmark romances boil down to two single people who meet each other and fall in love. That’s also the same movie here, just with less of a plot.		2025 Directed by: Jonathan Wright Screenplay by: Joie Botkin Starring: Lyndsy Fonseca, Daniel Lissing
Nell (Lyndsy Fonseca) loves Christmas but hates being alone. Every day it’s just more Christmas cards from friends getting married and having kids and she’s ready for the part of her life to start. She’s usually fine during the holidays since she has her family, but this year her parents and sister had to cancel their plans and Nell is all alone. So now she has decided, that’s fine, she is happy to live her best single life. This character is just a walking set of contradictions who seems to have a different view of single-ness every scene. She mellows out a lot in the second half, which of course coincides with when she has met Cooper and isn’t alone anymore. Cooper (Daniel Lissing) is a lawyer in the finance sector, he’s less corporate-y and greedy than his colleagues, tends to be observant and looking to help out others, he also likes family, but has a hard time being himself around others so plays up the corporate game at work. Notice how Cooper is single and yet gets a complete character description that doesn’t need to mention that he’s single, whereas Nell’s character description is just the fact that she’s single? The writers call out society for being obsessed with women being single but not men, and here they are doing the exact same thing. This movie is more exhausting than real-life, and it should be the opposite. Movies should be relaxing, but this isn’t, it just continuously leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For some people, the plot in Hallmark movies just gets in the way of a good romance. That shouldn’t be an issue here since there really isn’t much of a plot. It is just Nell learning how to be single, and doing that with Cooper, and after spending so much time together they naturally fall in love. It’s the age-old adage that once you stop looking for love, it will find you. The writers, through the main characters, claim to hate that saying, and yet here they are living it out.