Massimo Ghini
Franco Rispoli
Overview
When the Italian Premier and his companion find a dead body in his hotel suite, while on a trip to Hungary, they find themselves embroiled in a series of comedic situations as they try to avoid a scandal.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readA Farce That Forgets to Be Funny
I’ll admit it: I went into 5 Star Christmas expecting a certain kind of chaos. The premise—a dead body in a luxury hotel suite, a philandering prime minister, a Christmas setting that feels more like an afterthought—sounded like the kind of farce that could either collapse under its own weight or, if executed with enough manic energy, become something gloriously unhinged. Instead, it lands somewhere in the middle: a film that mistakes motion for momentum, where the doors slam, the lies pile up, and the jokes… well, the jokes mostly don’t land.
The setup is pure farce, the kind that thrives on confinement and escalation. A single location—a high-end Budapest hotel—becomes a pressure cooker for a group of characters who are, without exception, terrible people. The Italian prime minister (Massimo Ghini) is a lecherous buffoon; his mistress (Martina Stella) is a rival politician with her own agenda; the hotel staff are either incompetent or complicit; and the corpse in the closet is, of course, the least of their problems.
In theory, this should be a recipe for disaster comedy, the kind where every misstep leads to another, more absurd misstep, until the whole thing spirals into delightful nonsense. In practice, it’s a lot of people standing around talking, occasionally hiding behind furniture, and waiting for the next joke to arrive.
And that’s the problem: the jokes don’t arrive. Or, when they do, they’re so telegraphed that you can see them coming from a mile away. The film leans heavily on the kind of broad, physical comedy that feels like it belongs in a much older Italian farce—think slamming doors, exaggerated double takes, and characters tripping over their own lies.
But where those older films (the ones by the Vanzina brothers, whom this movie is clearly trying to emulate) had a certain rhythmic precision to their chaos, 5 Star Christmas feels sluggish, as if the cast is working through the motions without any real conviction. The dialogue is fast, but it’s not sharp; the situations are ridiculous, but they’re not inventive. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a stand-up comedian telling a joke you’ve heard a hundred times before, but with less energy.
Audience Opinions
Audience 4.7/10
"A labored hotel-room farce with a flimsy story and mostly mirthless gags that rarely earn its Christmas branding."
The overall impression is of a weak sex-and-politics farce where jokes seldom land, the story feels padded, and long stretches of chatter in a single hotel suite make it drag. latestnetflix.com's read is that Several viewers describe the plot as almost non-existent, the humor as boring or joyless, and the characters as grating stereotypes, though a smaller group finds it a mildly amusing, old-fashioned stage-style comedy with some lively wordplay and a few charming performances.
What viewers praise
- Farce-style setup A subset of viewers enjoys the limited-location, door-slamming hotel farce format with affairs, misunderstandings, and escalating chaos.
- Quick verbal exchanges Some appreciate the fast-talking dialogue and wordplay, which recalls older Italian comedies and stage pieces.
- Likeable leads for some Massimo Ghini and Martina Stella are occasionally singled out as bright spots, with a few viewers saying the cast can be fun even when the script is not.
- Light, undemanding tone A minority views it as a harmless, cute little comedy suitable for passing the time without high expectations.
Common complaints
- Not funny enough Many describe watching it stone-faced, calling it one of the most boring comedies they have seen and noting that very few jokes actually work.
- Thin or absent plot The story is often described as nonsense or non-existent, with minimal narrative drive beyond characters hiding a corpse and sneaking around.
- Slow and talky Long stretches confined to a hotel room with nonstop chatter are criticized as tedious, chaotic, and exhausting rather than brisk and witty.
- Stereotyped characters Several comments complain about shallow caricatures, especially lecherous men and decorative women, making the humor feel dated and mean-spirited.
- Weak Christmas element The holiday angle is viewed as largely cosmetic, with some disappointed that it barely feels like a Christmas movie despite the title.
Recommended for
Italian farce completists Low-stakes holiday background viewing Light political sex-comedy dabblers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey said Ghini was playing Conte. He said the job was allusion, not cabaret.
Italian papers spent October 2018 playing face-match. Netflix spent December 7 dumping the country's Christmas farce onto the app and skipping the theater queue. Corriere della Sera lined up Massimo Ghini's premier, Franco Rispoli, with Giuseppe Conte. The phones in the suite keep buzzing for "Giggino" and "Matteo," which the paper mapped onto Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini. Martina Stella's blonde opposition MP with a Tuscan lilt got the Maria Elena Boschi treatment. Ghini told the paper it was not an imitation. "In terms of satire we forgive nobody," he said. "There are references to Renzi and the politics around us." 
Enrico Vanzina, who wrote the script with his brother Carlo before Carlo died on July 8, 2018, fed the same rumor from the other side. "For years people said Italian politics looked like the Vanzina films," he told Corriere. "This time politics walks into a Vanzina film." He told Il Fatto Quotidiano that he and Carlo had already scouted Budapest two years earlier, then illness and death stopped Carlo from directing. Carlo named Marco Risi, latestnetflix.com contends, his friend and Dino Risi's son, as the replacement. ,
The last film they signed as a pair.
Ghini told Corriere the project was the last Vanzina film as a couple, Carlo's testament. On Film.it, Enrico said he would keep putting Carlo's name on the films he writes. Movieplayer printed the same handoff. Enrico wrote it with Carlo, health collapsed in July, and the directing chair went to Risi. The English title on Netflix is 5 Star Christmas. The Italian title is Natale a 5 stelle. TMDB files a 1 hour 32 minute Italian comedy dated December 7, 2018, with Ghini as Rispoli, Ricky Memphis as Walter Bianchini, Stella as Giulia Rossi, and Paola Minaccioni as Marisa Rispoli. Biagio Izzo, Andrea Osvart, and Ralph Palka round out the hotel circus. , , ,
A British farce, a porn star, and no ticket booth.
Wired called it the first Italian film Netflix coproduced with Lucky Red, present from the idea's first steps, unlike Sulla mia pelle, which the streamer bought after it was finished. The plot is Ray Cooney's 1990 stage farce Out of Order, reset as an official visit to Hungary that goes wrong when a body turns up in the suite. Rolling Stone Italia called it the first cinepanettone going straight to Netflix, while Massimo Boldi and Christian De Sica still opened Amici come prima in theaters that December. Movieplayer clocked a Rocco Siffredi cameo as himself, groping an admirer, plus a line about holding high the Italian flag in the world. The same review caught a Harvard misspelling gag about Conte's CV and a shot at Renzi as the biggest liar of the postwar years. , ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKBAs9BeuAs
Netflix's own page sells a TV-14 comedy in which the Italian prime minister meets his lover and political rival in Budapest during Christmas week. Andrea Occhipinti produced for Lucky Red. Wired's Gabriele Niola noted the Vanzinas had not made a Christmas film since Vacanze di Natale 2000, and that Neri Parenti still held the cinepanettone record. The gossip that stuck was simpler. Conte on the app. Boschi in a suite. A dead body in the wardrobe. No box office to argue with. Netflix Italia posted the official trailer in November. , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.