‘Single All The Way’ Is Netflix’s Near-Perfect Queer Christmas Rom-Com
A Christmas film for queer people, by queer people.
Single All The Way is the latest rom-com to make the yuletide gay, and queer fans are praising it for being the wholesome, almost-perfect Christmas rom-com they’ve been waiting for.
The film follows Peter and his best friend Nick, who are both out and surrounded by a community that loves them. When not obsessing over his plants, Peter works in social media strategy. His roommate, Nick, is a procrastinating children’s author and TaskRabbit handyman.
Suddenly single for the holidays, Peter asks Nick to come his New Hampshire family Christmas and pretend to be his boyfriend, so his family will stop grilling him for being single. But when Peter’s mum sets him up on a blind date with New Hampshire’s only eligible gay man, it becomes clear to everyone that Peter’s platonic feelings for roommate Nick aren’t as platonic as once thought.
So, Why Are The Gays Loving It?
What’s not to love about a rom-com that utilises such glorious rom-com tropes as ‘best friends to lovers’, ‘pretending to date’, and ‘oh no, there’s only one bed’? But the appreciation for Single All The Way runs deeper than its adorable tropes and gay characters.
Queer Christmas rom-coms aren’t anything new. In 2015, we had Carol, in which a 1950s Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara tortured audiences with a festive slow-burn. Five years later, 2020 blessed the gays with Happiest Season, starring a very hot Kristen Stewart.
However, Carol and Happiest Season used the holidays as a setting to explore narratives of being closeted. While still undeniably Christmas fare — and in Happiest Season‘s case undeniably a rom-com — the films inevitably steered into realities of being outed and the disintegration of closeted queer relationships. The queer love stories at the heart of Carol and Happiest Season were also pushed into sharing space with the straight people around them as the romances in each film serve as fodder for the straights to come to terms with their homophobia.
But Single All the Way finally offers queer folks a Christmas rom-com with no devastating strings attached. The furthest the film goes in acknowledging homophobia is with a running gag from Peter’s mother who consistently, though somewhat endearingly, gets the LGBTQIA acronym wrong.
Arguably, the film’s only blindspot lies in its literal blindness to race. Nick is the only Black man we see Peter or his family interact with in the film. Yet, Single All The Way is unwilling to explore or acknowledge Nick’s feelings being a Black man in mostly white spaces, in contrast to the extent that Peter’s feelings on being in New Hampshire, rather than LA, are explored.
Single All The Way didn’t have to be the Christmas remix of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but Nick becoming Peter’s family’s handyman while staying with them deserved more thought. A Black man doing free labour for an all-white family echoes an unsettling history. Nick is an author, but that element of his character is not emphasised as much as his handiwork and Black Twitter was quick to call that out.
But Is It Actually Good?
There is something celebratory in Single All The Way‘s refusal to decentre a gay love story in favour of humanising straight people. The story of Single all the Way is Peter and Nick’s, and theirs alone. Scenes where Peter’s whole family pile into a small frosted window to spy on the pair show their investment in the love story. But it is just that: investment. The answer to the question of whether or not Nick and Peter will get together isn’t one designed to provide Peter’s straight family with personal growth.
Actors are actors, but the sincere energy queer actors bring to queer roles is truly unparalleled.
Some of the film’s funniest moments come from these supportive vignettes. The film’s best comic support is from the fabulous Jennifer Coolidge. As Peter’s narcissistic aunt, she’s been saddled with organising the volunteer children-run nativity show and is attempting to direct them as serious method actors.
It’s also worth mentioning that the main stars of Single All The Way are actually gay — something which is not always a given in queer film. Michael Urie and Philemon Chambers’ chemistry and performances are simply adorable. Actors are actors, but the sincere energy queer actors bring to queer roles is truly unparalleled and this cast is no exception.
Single All The Way doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but does make that wheel wholesomely and hilariously gay.
As a film for queer people, by queer people, Single All The Way is worth 10 times the lacklustre hype it’s received and will become a cosy cult Christmas classic for years and queers to come.
Single All The Way is now streaming on Netflix.