This year’s selection of Christmas movies on Max is looking decidedly slender compared to last year’s variety. It seems that the streamer has whittled down the library of holiday hits that once had a home on the streamer formerly known as HBO Max. In their place are a lot of low-budget Lifetime made-for-TV Christmas movies, courtesy of David Zaslav’s Discovery networks.
Only half of our selections from 2022 remain on Max for this year’s Christmas season — but that doesn’t mean you can’t find some holiday merriment here. In our newly updated list of the best Christmas movies on Max, we’ve added Elf, A Hollywood Christmas, The Polar Express, Holiday Affair. Together with A Christmas Story, A Christmas Story Christmas, and more, you’ll be able to enjoy some heartwarming films on Max just in time for Christmas.
Looking for more holiday picks? We’ve also assembled guides to the best Christmas movies on Netflix and the best Christmas movies on Amazon Prime.
Elf (2003)
64%
7.1/10The 20th anniversary of Elf is too big to be contained by a single streaming service. Max and Hulu are both streaming the film this holiday season, which helped firmly establish former Saturday Night Live star Will Ferrell as a comedic leading man. Ferrell plays Buddy, a human who was raised by elves at the North Pole.
Since Buddy knows Santa and his elves are real, he takes offense to the way they are portrayed in New York City when he finally visits his biological father, Walter Hobbs (James Caan). The Hobbs family isn’t quite sure what to make of Buddy and his eccentricities, and neither is Jovie (New Girl‘s Zooey Deschanel), the beautiful young woman who catches Buddy’s eye.
The Polar Express (2004)
61%
6.6/10The Polar Express exists in the rare gray area of being both visually stunning and off-putting at the same time, because the human characters aren’t as convincing as the CG backgrounds. Those were the limitations of performance capture animation at the time, when animators just didn’t have all of the tricks and advancements that they do now.
Regardless, director Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s book The Polar Express has become a perennial favorite during the holiday season. Asteroid City‘s Tom Hanks lends his voice to several characters in the film, most notably the conductor of the Polar Express, a magical train heading directly for the North Pole that allows some lucky children to meet Santa Claus (Hanks) and have their Christmas wishes come true.
Holiday Affair (1949)
7.1/10Holiday Affair is a 1949 Christmas romance that exists in the shadow of World War II. During Christmastime, salesman Steve Mason (Robert Mitchum) realizes that Connie Ennis (Janet Leigh) is a secret shopper from a rival store. When Connie explains that she’s a war widow with a child to support, Steve allows her to get a refund for her purchase at the cost of his job.
Fortunately for Steve, he’s able to reunite with Connie, and he even hits it off with her son, Timmy (Gordon Gebert). There’s only one person who Steve isn’t popular with: Carl Davis (Wendell Corey), the man that Connie is supposed to be marrying in just a few days.
A Hollywood Christmas (2022)
5.2/10You can really tell that A Hollywood Christmas has the Hollywood part down because the Christmas movie within the movie is being filmed during the hot California summer. Said film is being directed by Jessica (Jessika Van), a woman who is exceptionally talented at making Christmas romance movies. Unfortunately for Jessica, a network executive named Christopher (Josh Swickard) informs her that this one might be her last Christmas flick unless it performs exceptionally well.
Jessica’s assistant, Reena (Anissa Borrego), is the first to realize that Jessica’s predicament is almost exactly like the plot of her Christmas movies. And if Jessica can put her knowledge of Christmas films to good use, she may save her career and start a romance with Christopher.
A Christmas Story Christmas (2022)
Four Christmases (2008)
41%
5.7/10Arthur Christmas (2011)
69%
7.1/10Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
64%
7.4/10A Christmas Story (1983)
77%
7.9/108-Bit Christmas (2021)
66%
6.7/10
