Let It Snow (2019)

Let It Snow arrives as a Netflix Christmas confection: a snowbound Illinois town, a blizzard, a diner called Waffle Town, and a handful of teenagers whose romantic collisions are meant to resolve by morning. The ensemble has been assembled with quiet deliberateness. A Latina lead bound for Columbia, a Black pop star passing through, a Filipino-American sidekick, an Asian-American cheerleader, a non-binary performer in the mix. Nobody remarks upon any of it, which is the point and also the ceiling. The diversity is architectural, not thematic. Race exists as casting, never as conversation.

The film's warmest achievement is the Dorrie and Kerry thread, a genuine queer romance with a closeted cheerleader, a public apology, and an open kiss in the diner that the movie treats as unremarkable. Elsewhere the empowerment is gentler and more familiar. Julie weighs Columbia against caring for her sick mother, and the mysterious Tin Foil Woman advises Addie to value her female friendships. These are small sermons, delivered softly enough to pass as holiday cheer.

The film declines several things, and the omissions are instructive. The snow is weather, not warning. There is no body-image arc, no neurodivergent character, no history to revise in a contemporary Christmas romance. The pop star's isolation and the brittle publicist amount to a shrug at fame, not a critique of the machinery behind it. The result is a pleasant, well-cast, mildly preachy trifle, background viewing for cookie decorating. It knows exactly what it is, and it never risks more than that.