“The Merry Gentlemen” with Chad Michael Murray: This Netflix Christmas film is like “Magic Mike”

In “The Merry Gentlemen” with Chad Michael Murray, a young woman finds true love thanks to strippers

It’s been a long time, but at some point in the 2010s the “Magic Mike” films with Channing Tatum were really a thing: à la Chippendales, dancers appeared and took off their clothes – in a subplot, a dancer fell in love and had to do a strip show and bring true love together.

This principle is now put into a Santa Claus outfit, transported to a small American town with a banal name and, hey presto – Netflix has released the next Christmas film. “The Merry Gentlemen” is a very shallow Christmas film in which you can guess the ending before it actually starts – and perhaps this sprinkling is good for many people. Good this way!

“The Merry Gentlemen”: That’s what it’s all about

Ashley is a dancer in the Christmas revue of the “Jingle Belles” (in real life it would be the legendary Rockettes), but loses her gig shortly before Christmas because – age shaming! – is replaced by a younger dancer. What else can she do but return to her snowy hometown of Sycamore Creek (in reality it’s a film studio in California), where her parents and sister run a live club and a diner and Ashley hasn’t been there for years (!) was visiting.

But on site, the hated Broadway dancers expect news from Knecht Ruprecht and not from Santa Claus: Because their parents’ club is facing financial ruin, there is even no money for qualified craftsmen – instead the town newbie Luke takes on all sorts of tasks (also without a shirt).

When he repairs a drain shirtless in front of Ashley in the dead of winter, because that’s what Luke does, the ex-dancer then has a very surprising or obvious idea: She develops a choreography à la “Magic Mike” with the most handsome men in the world Small town and saves her parents’ club with this strip show. The fact that this show, cobbled together in just a few days and featuring three to five amateur dancers in a small town in front of a local audience, brought in the required $30,000 is exactly one thing: an absolutely predictable Christmas miracle.