Adam & Alison Watch Christmas Movies: A PICKLEBALL CHRISTMAS

by Adam Thas and Alison Thas

The best Pickleball movie ever made.

Alison: Wow! To imagine a Christmas movie about pickleball would almost seem like a fever dream, but here we are. A Pickleball Christmas is a new Lifetime movie featuring Zibby Allen and James Lafferty. Allen plays Caroline, a tennis player-turned-pickleball coach whose passion for the sport came from finding a community after the loss of her mother. Unfortunately, the club where she works is in dire financial straits due to the impact of Covid. If the owner cannot come up with enough money by the 26th of December, they will be forced to sell to a real estate developer. Enter Luke Hollis (played by Lafferty), who is the owner’s son and just so happens to be a tennis champion coming off of his first Wimbledon win. Will Caroline’s Christmas Day fundraising pickleball tournament be enough to save the club? Can Luke overcome his prejudices towards pickleball in time to help Caroline? The drama here is about as intense as a game of pickleball!

A Pickleball Christmas brings up a question that many have been debating since Die Hard: does having a movie set during Christmas make it a Christmas movie? Sadly, I fall in the camp of "no."  While the plot of A Pickleball Christmas was entertaining enough to wrap presents to, it didn’t exude holiday charm. One of the main issues working against the holiday movie magic is the setting of the movie: Florida. A few B-roll shots of palm trees wrapped in Christmas lights and giant candy canes placed sporadically around the club wasn’t enough to drive home the Christmas feeling. The writers did their best infusing Christmas into the plot but hosting a pickleball tournament on Christmas Day does not make it a Christmas movie. Ultimately, A Pickleball Christmas is more of a story about love and redemption.

Adam: Last year, Lifetime gave us a movie based on the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce love affair and this year we get a movie based on the sport that is sweeping the country: pickleball. I must be honest: I enjoyed this movie way more than I thought I would because of how incredibly unapologetic it is. A Pickleball Christmas is not trying to be anything more than a cookie-cutter holiday rom-com to the point that they could have just plugged “Write a holiday rom-com with pickleball” into ChatGPT and this is easily what would have popped out. There are things to like. Zebby Allen is good as the lead and it’s a nice “twist” that rather than a businesswoman coming back into town, the man is the one coming back to town.

I also have to give credit to A Pickleball Christmas for having them actually play pickleball. It may seem obvious for a movie about pickleball to feature pickleball, but they easily could have just made this movie and concentrated on nothing but the love story. I know what you’re thinking: “Yeah, but why would I want to watch people play pickleball?” And that really is the problem. They try; boy, do they try. Try as they may to make pickleball interesting, it’s just not. Now I don’t want to come off the wrong way, I’ve played pickleball and enjoyed it, but they simply don’t have the budget to make pickleball look good. In so many sports movies, they use quick cuts, lighting, and angles to make the sport and action look fantastic. In A Pickleball Christmas, it appears they set up three cameras and told the actors to just “play.” There are some wide shots where the camera looks like an internet live stream of your local neighborhood pickleball court and it’s hilariously awkward.

Alison and I had the intention of reviewing another movie here in A Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story, the sequel to A Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story that we reviewed last year. We watched it, but didn’t write a review because it was beyond boring. What did jump out, though, is that we are starting to see the difference between a Hallmark and a Lifetime holiday rom-com. Yes, there is a difference. What we’ve come to notice is that if Lifetime is “vanilla,” then Hallmark is a piece of cardboard. For most of the Hallmark movies, there is no drama and the peak of physicality between the main love interests is holding hands and a kiss near the end of the movie. Not Lifetime, though. In all the Lifetime movies we’ve watched so far, our main characters are knockin’ boots right away, to the point where there is running joke in A Pickleball Christmas in which old ladies listen to them hook-up in the supply shed.

A Pickleball Christmas is absurd and a very clear money grab of a ridiculous concept, but in terms of where it fits into the holiday rom-com genre, I didn’t hate it.

Adam’s List:

1) Holidate (2020, Netflix)

2) Love Hard (2021, Netflix)

3) Your Christmas or Mine (2022, Amazon)

4) Hot Frosty (2024, Netflix)

5) Holiday Calendar (2018, Netflix)

6) Snowed Inn (2017, Hallmark)

7) Christmas in the Spotlight (2024, Lifetime)

8) The Princess Switch (2018, Netflix)

9) Falling for Christmas (2022, Netflix)

10) The Knight Before Christmas (2019, Netflix)

11)  EXmas (2023, Amazon/Freevee)

12) Midnight at the Magnolia (2020, Netflix)

13) Deck the Walls (2025, Hallmark)

14) The Christmas Train (2017, Hallmark)

15) Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story (2024, Hallmark)

16) Joy to the World (2025, Hulu)

17) Holiday in the Vineyard (2023, Netflix)

18) Meet Me Next Christmas (2024, Netflix)

19) Champagne Problems (2025, Netflix)

20) A Pickleball Christmas (2025, Lifetime)

21) Christmas Under Wraps (2014, Hallmark)

22) Reporting for Christmas (2023, Hulu)

23) The Princess Switch 2: Switched Again (2020, Netflix)

24) A Christmas Vintage (2023, Amazon)

25) Merry Gentlemen (2024, Netflix)  

26) The Noel Diary (2022, Netflix)

27) The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star (2021, Netflix)

28) One Royal Holiday (2020, Hallmark)

29) Christmas on the Farm (2022, Hulu)

30) Holiday in the Wild (2019, Netflix)

31) Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (2018, Hallmark)

32) A Perfect Christmas Pairing (2023, Amazon)

33) Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022, Hallmark)

34) Christmas on the Ranch (2024, Hulu)

35) Best. Christmas. Ever. (2023, Netflix)

Alison’s List:

1) The Princess Switch (2018, Netflix)

2) Your Christmas or Mine (2022, Amazon)

3) Love Hard (2021, Netflix)

4) Holiday Calendar (2018, Netflix)

5) Falling for Christmas (2022, Netflix)

6) Holidate (2020, Netflix)

7) The Christmas Train (2017, Hallmark)

8) The Knight Before Christmas (2019, Netflix)

9) Deck the Walls (2024, Hallmark)

10) Champagne Problems (2025, Netflix)

11) Holiday in the Vineyards (2023, Netflix)

12) Meet Me Next Christmas (2024, Netflix)

13) Midnight at the Magnolia (2020, Netflix)

14) Hot Frosty (2024, Netflix)

15) Christmas Under Wraps (2014, Hallmark)

16) Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (2018, Hallmark)

17) The Princess Switch 2: Switched Again (2020, Netflix)

18) EXmas (2023, Amazon/Freevee)

19) Snowed Inn (2017, Hallmark)

20) A Pickleball Christmas (2025, Lifetime)

21) Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story (2024, Hallmark)

22) Reporting for Christmas (2023, Hulu)

23) The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star (2021, Netflix)

24) One Royal Holiday (2020, Hallmark)

25) The Noel Diary (2022, Netflix)

26) Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022, Hallmark)

27) A Christmas Vintage (2023, Amazon)

28) A Perfect Christmas Pairing (2023, Amazon)

29) Christmas in the Spotlight (2024, Lifetime)

30) Joy to the World (2024, Hulu)

31) Christmas on the Farm (2022, Hulu)

32) Holiday in the Wild (2019, Netflix)

33) Merry Gentlemen (2024, Netflix)

34) Best. Christmas. Ever. (2023, Netflix)

35) Christmas on the Ranch (2024, Hulu)