Prime Video is getting into the holiday spirit this December with a fresh lineup of Christmas movies perfect for the season. Following the arrivals of the modern Christmas classic Love Actually and the new holiday film Oh. What. Fun. earlier this month, the Amazon streamer just premiered its new Christmas rom-com starring Marvel’s Charlie Cox, but opinions are mixed on its watchability.
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The Amazon Original movie Merv landed on Prime Video on December 10th. The movie stars Cox and Zooey Deschanel as Russ and Anna, an estranged couple forced into an unusual co-parenting arrangement when their beloved dog Merv loses his spark after their split. As they work together to fix Merv’s broken heart, they discover that it just may rekindle some sparks of their own.
Merv Is a Predictable but Sweet Holiday Rom-Com
With only five reviews on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of posting, there isn’t enough of a consensus for Merv to earn a critic score just yet. However, the general consensus seems to be that the movie mostly sticks to the status quo when it comes to holiday rom-coms and just passes as a watchable, albeit easy to forget, holiday fare.
Variety’s Tomris Laffly wrote that Merv “amounts to straight-to-streaming filler of one-note visuals and emotions that might temporarily put a forgettable smile on your face,” and Collider’s Nate Richard said that “despite the tagline promising ‘a different breed of romantic comedy,’ you pretty much know exactly what you’ll get from Merv just by looking at the poster. But hey, it’s still a pretty darn cute Christmas rom-com.” ScreenRant’s Grant Hermanns described Merv as “a Hallmark-level title that has no faith in its viewers’ intelligence” that, while hitting “the familiar beats that many find comforting,” “spells out everything to the point of leaving no nuance for viewers to reflect on.”
Merv really just boils down to a serviceable and cheesy holiday movie perfect for fans of the genre that ultimately fails to break ground. The movie largely relies on the charming performances of its leads and the scene-stealing adorable pooch at the heart of it all to overcome a generic and predictable script filled with underdeveloped characters and hit-or-miss humor. If you’re a fan of rom-coms or holiday films, you’ll likely find some brief enjoyment in Merv, but it’s not likely to be a movie that you’ll add to your annual Christmas movie marathon.
What’s New on Prime Video?
Merv is one of several movies freshly streaming on Prime Video this December. The largest number of arrivals dropped on December 1st when titles like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), the Madagascar franchise, and Zombieland dropped. Other movies, like Bullet Train and The Phoenician Scheme, have rolled out since, with even more titles set to arrive to Prime later this month, such as Joker: Folie à Deux (December 16th) and A Minecraft Movie (December 22nd).
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Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
