Christmas rom-com EXmas stars Leighton Meester and Robbie Amell

This latest one probably isn't unique, but it does pave the way for a classic rom-com stitch-up.

In EXmas, baker Ali (Leighton Meester, out-acted by her fringe) is not missing her ex-fiance at all in the lead-up to Christmas, but she is missing his family a great deal - especially as she has no family of her own to spend the festive season with. So when workaholic Graham (Robbie Amell, smiley as ever) calls the fam to say he's got a killer deadline (why the graphics for a video game would need a Christmas deadline is just the sort of plot contrivance it's best not to think too hard about in this film) and won't be making it back to Minnesota for the holidays, they invite Ali instead.

But of course Graham does make it home, and gets a far less enthusiastic welcome than he was expecting because the woman who dumped him six months ago is not only celebrating with his family, she's occupying his room.

The mere awkwardness of exes spending Christmas together would have carried the plot just fine, but writer Dan Steele (who previously wrote for Meester's Gossip Girl and Hart of Dixie) decided to throw in some extra illogical and ridiculous stakes - if Graham can't convince his parents to throw Ali out by Christmas morning, she gets to "keep" his family for all future holidays, and he can't attend any of them.

That also leads us to this hilarious piece of dialogue: "I have to get mum and dad to dump Ali before Christmas, otherwise I'm gonna have to share my family forever!"

These kinds of movies live or die by the assortment of odd characters they bring together, and while EXmas doesn't give us particularly memorable side characters, they do the job well enough.

There's the mum, Jeannie (Kathryn Greenwood), who is far too attached to the baby Jesus figure in her front yard nativity scene and just wants everyone to get along and be happy. Then there's dad Dennis (Michael Hitchcock), a bumbling sort who owns the town car dealership and dresses as Santa at the Christmas party. Rounding out the family are sister Mindy (Veronika Slowikowska) and adopted brother Elliott (Steven Huy) who have very few personality traits of their own.

Through toilet mishaps, competitive game nights and unintentionally spiked Christmas cookies, Ali and Graham try and prove the other is an inferior member of the family. There's also a very strange subplot involving the repeated disappearance of baby Jesus from the nativity scene that has the most underwhelming payoff.

Nothing in this film garners more than the slightest of chuckles, and yet, even with the bare minimum amount of chemistry, we still want the attractive leads to get back together.

On the plus side, we've all seen Christmas movies that are significantly worse than Exmas. At Midnight director Jonah Feingold has helmed a film that, as far as the Christmas genre goes, is smack bang in the middle of the road.