Trivia At St Nick’s is one of those movie titles that could be really good or be absolutely terrible. Honestly, I think the name of the lead characters’ trivia team would have been a better title…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Celeste (Tammin Sursok) is an astronomy professor who loves competing in the local bar’s Christmas trivia contest every year. Unfortunately, her team, The Quizmas Elves, have yet to win the big trophy. When her Jeopardy!-winning colleague has to drop out of the contest for a speaking engagement in Asia, Celeste is forced to accept Max (Brant Daugherty), the college’s football coach, onto the team to make the required number of members. As the team participates in team building activities that help them build their Christmas trivia knowledge, Celeste finds herself appreciating Max more than she thought possible.
Yes, I think The Quizmas Elves would have been a much cuter title than Trivia At St Nick’s. (St Nick being the name of the bar where the trivia contest is held.) Title aside, I did find this movie enjoyable. It focused more on learning new facts and building camaraderie amongst the team members than making Celeste and Max take romantic walks among the snowy trees or something. The movie also allowed whole trivia questions to be read so we, the audience, could participate at little as well. Usually movies with trivia fade out over half of a question to start another one so we don’t get to try to guess the answers ourselves. It was a nice change of pace.
I think my only critique is that they made Celeste a little too “Type A.” She almost becomes unlikeable by only letting certain teammates answer certain questions - for example, history buff Gary (Willie C. Carpenter) is only allowed to answer the history questions and get shushed when he tries to answer something outside of his expertise . I’m not sure why her team would stick around year after year. I know my friends and family would drop out of something that is supposed to be fun if I was super controlling. But, of course, that gets resolved by the end of the movie. I guess there needed to be some sort of conflict.
Rating: Merry Quizmas!