Single All the Way (2021)

Single All the Way arrived on Netflix in December 2021 as something genuinely new: a major studio Christmas rom-com with a gay couple at the center. Not a subplot. Not a supporting character. The whole movie. That alone made it an event. The question is whether it's a good Christmas movie on top of being an important one. The answer, with some caveats, is yes.

A Hallmark Movie With Better Casting

The plot could not be more familiar. Peter (Michael Urie) is single and dreading the annual interrogation from his family about his love life. He convinces his best friend and roommate Nick (Philemon Chambers) to come home to New Hampshire for Christmas and pretend to be his boyfriend. Peter's mother Carole (Kathy Najimy) has other plans: she's already arranged a blind date with her personal trainer, James (Luke Macfarlane).

If you've seen any Hallmark Christmas movie, you know exactly where this is going. The "fake boyfriend" will turn out to be the real one. The family will be chaotically loving. There will be a Christmas pageant. There will be a moment of manufactured conflict in the third act, followed by a reconciliation in the snow.

Director Michael Mayer, a Tony Award winner for Spring Awakening, doesn't try to reinvent the formula. He leans into it. The genius of Single All the Way is understanding that the formula itself was never the problem. Gay audiences were simply never invited to use it.

The Jennifer Coolidge Factor

Screenwriter Chad Hodge wrote the role of Aunt Sandy specifically for Jennifer Coolidge, and it shows. Coolidge plays a wildly eccentric aunt who ropes the entire family into her unhinged community theater Christmas pageant. She rehearses with the intensity of a Broadway director staging Hamilton. She delivers line readings that should be studied in acting schools.

This was before The White Lotus made Coolidge an awards darling, but she's doing exactly what she's always done: taking a stock comedy character and making her feel like a real person who just happens to be completely insane. Her commitment to the pageant subplot turns what could have been dead screen time into the movie's comedic highlight.

Kathy Najimy is equally good as Peter's mother, playing Carole as a woman so enthusiastically supportive of her gay son that she's become overbearing about it. It's a sharp observation: acceptance, taken to its extreme, becomes its own kind of pressure.

What Makes It Work (and What Doesn't)

The most radical thing about Single All the Way is what it doesn't do. There's no coming-out scene. No homophobic relatives at the dinner table. No tearful confrontation about acceptance. Peter's family has long since moved past all of that. They just want him to find someone. The conflict is romantic, not political.

This creative decision, which Hodge made deliberately, sets the film apart from most LGBTQ holiday content. It treats gayness as ordinary, which, in the context of Christmas movies, was genuinely revolutionary in 2021.

Where the movie stumbles is in the love triangle. James is handsome and kind but written as so generically perfect that there's never any real doubt about who Peter belongs with. The script needed a version of James who was genuinely compelling as a romantic rival, someone the audience might actually root for. Instead, he's a placeholder who exists to make Peter realize what's been in front of him all along.

Philemon Chambers, in his film debut, has easy chemistry with Urie. Their friendship feels lived-in and real, which is the one thing the movie absolutely had to get right. Chambers doesn't have much to do beyond be handsome and patient, but he does both convincingly.

The Cast of Single All the Way

Michael Urie carries the film with the kind of motor-mouthed energy that makes you wonder why he isn't in more things. His background in theater (he's best known for Ugly Betty and years of stage work) gives him precise comic timing. Urie, Chambers, and Macfarlane are all openly gay actors, a casting choice that Urie pushed for during production.

Barry Bostwick shows up as Peter's cheerfully oblivious father, Harold. Jennifer Robertson brings grounded warmth as Peter's sister Lisa. The family ensemble feels natural together, which is critical for a movie that's really about family more than romance.

Where to Watch Single All the Way

The film is a Netflix original, available exclusively on the platform. It remains one of Netflix's most successful original Christmas films: during its debut week, it ranked number 6 on the streamer's global top 10 with 13.82 million hours viewed and appeared in the weekly top 10 in 42 countries.

At 99 minutes, it doesn't overstay its welcome. The pacing is brisk, the New England winter setting (filmed in Montreal, standing in for a small New Hampshire town) is appropriately picturesque, and the Christmas decorations are deployed with the precision of a Pottery Barn catalog.

The whole thing ends with Jennifer Coolidge's Christmas pageant, which is exactly where it should end: on something ridiculous and joyful, with a handmade papier-mache donkey stealing focus from the leads.