Delivery by Christmas Parent Guide

It’s two days until Christmas and Maria (Monika Frajczyk) is powering through her delivery schedule. As a courier, she’s living up to her company’s motto: Everything arrives by Christmas. The next day, the unthinkable happens and the addresses for her packages are switched around, meaning that her customers receive the wrong deliveries on Christmas Eve. Since her young son’s Christmas gift is amongst the parcels, Maria is highly motivated to ensure that the mistakes are rectified and everyone gets what they deserve.

Krzysztof (Piotr Pacek) is also fixated on Maria’s deliveries. The young businessman is expecting a family heirloom ring and when it doesn’t arrive, he tracks down Maria and insists on accompanying her until it’s found. His unpleasant personality takes a difficult circumstance and makes it exponentially worse.

Delivery by Christmas is a profoundly unpleasant film, which Netflix inexplicably purchased from its Polish developer. I’m not even sure what genre the movie is trying to be. There’s not enough humor for a comedy, not enough chemistry for a romance, and too much self-conscious tedium for a drama. It’s simply a cinematic failure that spends 97 miserable minutes crawling across our screens.

As the script follows the impact of the misdelivered packages on the recipients, it generates more tedious cliches. There’s the sexually frustrated middle-aged woman, her oblivious husband, a failed-to-launch man child, and a crotchety old man. None of the characters are well drawn, and some are frankly unbelievable. For instance, it’s impossible to credit that a grumpy old man who won’t pass down a family heirloom will reward a child who steals from him. It just doesn’t make sense.

It’s hard to imagine that the movie can go downhill from here, but it does. The worst part of the film is the ingrained sexism. Maria’s boss tries to kiss her at an office party and wreaks his revenge when she politely rejects him. Krzysztof treats her with disdain, criticizes her constantly, and feels free to insult her at will. His attitudes are apparently inherited since his grandfather callously says, “The morning’s rain and a girl’s pain both fade away pretty quick.” Certainly, no one in the film seems to care about Maria’s feelings, needs, or right to be treated with respect.

I can’t imagine who Netflix thinks will sit through this awful production. Not only is it painful to watch, it’s full of sexual innuendo, alcohol consumption, and profanity. For full measure, the English dub track is bad, so the subtitles are probably a better choice.

If you’re looking for holiday relaxation, there are cleaner rom-coms out there, better Christmas movies, more thoughtful interpersonal dramas, and far, far better ways to spend 97 minutes. Frankly, reorganizing your Christmas wrapping paper would be a more entertaining and productive use of your time. And it would even feel more festive. Take it from me, unless you’re looking for a holiday buzzkill and the Grinch doesn’t do it for you anymore, give this ghastly film a pass.