carry on3

Carry-On

Netflix
It is currently Christmas Eve Eve, and family may already be starting to arrive for the holiday. As much as we’d all like to believe that family get-togethers over the holidays are all baking cookies and singing Christmas carols, there is certainly going to be enough downtime where you’re going to want to throw on a movie at some point. And with Netflix being the most common streaming service of choice, you have some options.

However, I’m going to recommend one Netflix Christmas movie more than others, and no, it’s not Hot Frosty or any of the ones starring Lindsay Lohan. It’s PG-13 so you’ll want to send the younger kids to bed as it does get uh, pretty violent. It’s Carry-On, currently the number one movie on Netflix, and for good reason — it’s excellent.

We are of course stretching the bounds of what a Christmas movie technically is here, but Carry-On is a Christmas movie in the same sense that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and the subject of eternal debate. Believe me, I am not saying that Carry-On is as good as Die Hard — it isn’t. Nor is star Taron Egerton as good as Bruce Willis — he’s not. But Carry-On is a very watchable, surprisingly good thriller that takes place over Christmas Eve, with a TSA agent being blackmailed on the busiest day of the year to let some sort of extremely dangerous package through security.

carry on2

Carry-On

Netflix
In truth, Netflix does not have that many good Christmas movies. A lot of the classics are on other streaming services and its Christmas library is mostly full of a bunch of “girl returns to her small hometown and finds love” movies. They’re not great, though of course there remains a huge market for that kind of thing. But Carry-On is both new and also something that your family probably has not watched yet, given that it’s so new. Again, I’ll caution about some violence here, as it stretches its PG-13 rating a bit in that direction. But no nudity, no f-bombs.

Carry-On has been sitting on top of Netflix’s Top 10 list for quite some time now, raising questions about a possible sequel. It does not exactly seem designed for one, but hey, I guess Die Hard wasn’t either. That said, the name might make not much sense — how many action thriller plot lines can you design around the concept of a dangerous carry-on bag?

Watch this with the family. Well, some of the family. Teens and parents and grandparents alike have a good shot of liking it.