Christina’s mother has already made room for a boyfriend at Christmas dinner. The man himself is the missing ingredient. Helen even folds the search for him into the family prayer, giving her daughter’s relationship status an audience and a little divine supervision. Lucy Hale plays Christina, a furniture-shop owner in her thirties whose accomplishments have somehow failed to settle the matter of how she is doing. David Lipper’s The 12 Dates of Christmas finds a recognizable discomfort here: being welcomed home and assessed at the same time.
Her sisters give the conversation its unspoken measuring stick. Emily is engaged; Sophie is trying for a baby. Christina wants some encouragement for her efforts too, and Hale makes that desire easy to understand. There is room in her approachable performance for affection toward this family alongside the embarrassment it causes her. The dinner could have reduced Christina to a lonely woman awaiting rescue. Her request for recognition gives her a slightly different position: she would like to share in the celebration without continually supplying an explanation for herself.
Unfortunately, she also makes a promise. Next Christmas, she will bring a date. By September, with nobody lined up, her friend and shop colleague Molly, played by Kahyun Kim, puts together a dating profile and arranges twelve dates across the twelve weeks before the holiday. It is an efficient setup. A deadline gives separate encounters a common purpose, so every unsuccessful evening brings Christina closer to an awkward return to the dinner table. It also makes finding a partner feel like an assignment she has accepted under pressure.
The first date gives that assignment a reasonably sharp comic obstacle. Chadwick is an influencer who livestreams their time together, talking to his viewers while Christina struggles with being made part of his content. His divided attention supplies the joke: she has arrived for an encounter between two people and discovered that an invisible crowd has been invited. Christina’s discomfort with social media makes the mismatch especially clear. For a little while, the film finds something specific to do with the familiar experience of a date who cannot put his phone away.
Then the other men arrive, and the differences between them become less useful. A promising Australian needs his mother’s approval. Another prospect turns out to be a fugitive. These are broad comic reversals, and their absurdity can provide some undemanding amusement. The difficulty comes from the film’s episodic structure, a succession of little stories that largely stand alone. Christina meets someone, discovers the catch, talks it over with Molly, and tries again. The reason for disappointment changes much faster than her understanding of what she wants.
I kept wanting the dates to leave something behind. A mistaken first impression might alter her next choice; an unexpectedly pleasant encounter might complicate the family’s idea of a suitable man. Instead, the repeated failures mainly confirm that this particular candidate will not do. The montage that gathers some encounters under upbeat music helps move through the list, compressing several disappointments into a brisk stretch. Yet even when the editing saves time, the story remains occupied with eliminating possibilities. Christina’s romantic future gets little clearer as her schedule gets emptier.
Peter offers a welcome change of activity. Played by Ian Harding, he is an old high-school acquaintance back from a finance career in New York, with an apparent attachment to Bridget, played by Greer Grammer, complicating Christina’s interest. He commissions Christina to work on a loveseat, which gives him a practical reason to return to her shop. I like the possibility in that choice. Their contact can happen within a life Christina has already built, through work she knows how to do, without another first-date interview.
Hale and Harding are pleasant together, and the shop visits allow some ease into a film crowded with awkward introductions. Their previous work on Pretty Little Liars adds a familiar association. Too few of those meetings develop into substantial shared experience, though. We spend so much time watching Christina reject other men that Peter’s comparatively brief appearances must carry a disproportionate amount of romantic expectation.
That imbalance also makes his appeal too easy to establish. Being preferable to a livestreaming narcissist or a fugitive is a modest qualification for a romantic lead. The film gives Christina ample reason to stop seeing other people, then asks the leads’ agreeable rapport to supply much of the reason she should choose this one.
When Peter encounters Christina’s family at the hospital, their immediate excitement embarrasses her and briefly gives the romance a different pressure. She is once again being watched by people eager to see a man beside her, this time before the pair have had much opportunity to define their connection. There is a useful scene inside that discomfort: Christina needs space to discover what Peter means to her while her relatives are already responding to what his presence means to them.
The 12 Dates of Christmas premiered on Hulu on November 6, 2026. Directed by David Lipper, the festive romantic comedy follows a successful shop owner who goes on 12 dates in the 12 weeks leading up to Christmas in hopes of finding true love after putting her career first for years.
Where to Watch The 12 Dates of Christmas (2026) Online
Full Credits
Title: The 12 Dates of Christmas
Distributor: Hulu
Release date: November 6, 2026
Rating: 12
Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes (96 minutes)
Director: David Lipper
Writers: David Lipper, Seth Howard
Producers and Executive Producers: David Lipper, Ryan Winterstern, Richard Alan Reid, Michael Philip, Robert A. Daly Jr., Carter Jenkins
Cast: Lucy Hale, Ian Harding, Penelope Ann Miller, Paul Ben-Victor, Greer Grammer, Kahyun Kim, Carter Jenkins, David Lipper
The Review
The 12 Dates of Christmas
Lucy Hale gives Christina’s wish for family recognition an appealing warmth, and the livestreamed date finds a sharp joke in divided attention. I wish the later encounters had changed her choices as readily as they changed her dinner companions. The repeated comic reversals keep the calendar moving while her relationship with Peter struggles to develop. Their furniture-shop meetings offer an easy rapport worth spending time with, but the film keeps hurrying off to the next unsuitable man.
PROS
- Hale makes Christina’s family frustrations sympathetic.
- The livestreamed date delivers a pointed social-media joke.
- Shop visits give Hale and Harding an easy rapport.
CONS
- Failed dates rarely influence Christina’s next choice.
- Peter and Christina receive too little shared development.
