The Merry Gentlemen suffers with Hallmark storylines

As Netflix once again rolls out its selection of holiday films, The Merry Gentlemen suffers by relying too much on Hallmark cliches. This film could be any Hallmark Christmas movie as the base of the story follows a woman leaving New York City to return to her rural home, where she meets a small-town man, falls in love, and chooses to remain in town. Now, the only difference here is that the movie's lead, Ashley, is originally from this town, while her male love interest is originally stated to be from the city. However, this is irrelevant as the film insists on utilizing Luke as a small-town man.

The Merry Gentlemen is predictable in all the same ways that audiences would yawn at a Hallmark film. However, this movie's biggest problem is its refusal to take a risk, even with options for a similar ending. Completely expected, Ashley chooses to remain in her small town with Luke, picking him over a career that has already ended even though her job had been offered back to her. However, there are plenty of more ways this film could have utilized these plot lines.

Upon believing her dance career has ended after being fired from the Jingle Bells and discovering that her family's business, The Rhythm Room, is on the verge of closing forever, Ashley decides on a different technique to save the bar. Inspired by a conversation with her sister, Ashley decides to gather Luke, along with other local men in favor of the Rhythm Room remaining in business, to create a male dance review or male strip show. While Ashley's return home works for the movie's narrative, this is an early aspect of the film where the movie begins to fall apart. Ashley believes her dance career is over after losing her part in a Christmas show. But she has supposedly been working and living in New York City for years. So, it makes no sense that she has seemingly determined that her career is done. If Ashley was as great of a dancer as the film makes her out to be, why was the movie framing Ashley's career as if it began and ended with appearing in one Christmas show every year? Did she never get another job dancing in any other performance?

If viewers are willing to ignore that, Ashley's interest in choreography, which should have become the anchor and motivation behind Ashley's eventual decision to stay in town, along with wanting to help her family, never really becomes anything. It exists but without the confirmation that this will be a profession for her moving forward, even though it is well-established that she loves to dance. The Merry Gentlemen never suggests that Ashley hated dancing or was not successful, so the refusal to allow her to move forward with this as a career, or even suggest the possibility of teasing her interest in opening her own dance studio in town, is a massive miss for the film.

Instead, The Merry Gentlemen makes the mistake of focusing too much on the growing romance between Ashley and Luke, and not enough on Ashley's relationships with all the male dancers who join her plight to save her family's dying business. Luke, in his own right, does not even offer a lot of personality. Without offering Ashley more time to bond with the other characters, emotional conflicts between the group fall flat. After all, when you barely see them interact in the first place, why would there be any real investment in watching the group fall apart?

Rather than allowing Ashley's plot line to grow around realizing her passion for choreography and desire to be there for her family and friends, The Merry Gentlemen makes the frustrating and repetitive choice of allowing the romance to take center stage. This is particularly difficult to take in when taking into account that Ashley and Luke had only known each other for about a month by the time Ashley arrived in town and when the movie ended. While there is certainly supposed to be a spark between them, is their relationship supposed to be strong enough to make Ashley decide to throw away the dream career she wanted? The Merry Gentlemen had already offered several motivations and reasons outside of Luke that would have been more than enough to justify Ashley's decision against returning to New York City. To make Luke the deciding factor in Ashley's choice when there were so many other factors that would have helped make that decision results in making it feel like Ashley's storyline was more about falling in love with a man than anything attached to her as a person. Luke could have been a part of Ashley's happy ending without making it feel like he was the main part of it, especially as The Merry Gentlemen makes the point earlier in the movie of having Ashley say that a woman does not need a man to be happy.

The Merry Gentlemen could have found a balance between allowing this film to be about Ashley figuring out what the next phase of her life looks like while falling in love with Luke. Unfortunately, the final part of the movie places romance above the individual, even going as far as to put Ashley in the position of having to alter her life for Luke rather than including the conversation of whether Luke would be willing to follow Ashley so that she could live her dream. To make the guilt fall on Ashley for leaving Luke behind when he was not even willing to entertain the idea of traveling with Ashley to keep their relationship going was hurtful to the characters and the storyline. Ultimately, for as much as The Merry Gentlemen wants to be an enjoyable film, there is not much to this Christmas movie.