My colleague Leslie Gray Streeter and I were on our way to watch a movie together.

We’d picked “Love Actually” as the Christmas flick we’d disagree on this year. She loathes it, I love it.

Then someone in the newsroom said, “Oh, you should watch ‘The Baltimorons.’ It’s a Christmas movie.”

And like cats distracted by tinsel on a tree, we were off in an unexpected direction.

I’m telling you once, I’m telling you twice, “The Baltimorons” is not a Christmas movie. I know what Leslie is writing, and she’s wrong for the holidays.

This dark romantic comedy is part of another genre, one harder to get into: the Baltimore movie. To the eyes of this Annapolis guy, Baltimore in winter is the star.

Oh, it’s set at Christmas. So is “Die Hard.” Just look at how that argument is still playing out, 37 years after Hans Gruber fell from Nakatomi Tower. This is the reverse effect.

Leslie: My dear Rick is wrong about so many things here, but the two most important ones to call out are that “The Baltimorons” is a Christmas movie, and so is “Die Hard.” How dare you, really.

Compare these two films to other modern Yuletide-set fare that combine family drama, romance and often unwelcome self-discovery like “The Family Stone,” “The Holiday” and the aforementioned wretched “Love, Actually.”

Having a series of obligatory and allegedly festive events with people you’ve been avoiding all year? Being forced to feel holiday cheer when, to paraphrase “Elf’s” Buddy, you just want to scream for all to hear?

That’s Christmas. That’s “The Baltimorons.”

Rick: There’s a lot not to give away in writing about this movie by Jay Duplass and Michael Strassner, starring Strassner and Liz Larsen.

Strassner’s Cliff is a recovering alcoholic and former improv comic who breaks a tooth on Christmas Eve while visiting his fiancée’s family in Baltimore.

He finds a dentist, Larsen’s Didi, who will treat him that day. Together, their meet-cute turns into a daylong adventure through the winter-gray streets of Baltimore.

Dreary Baltimore in December is the best part of the movie.

Cliff and Didi travel to the kitsch Miracle on 34th Street Christmas lights in Hampden, along the rowhouses of Fells Point, past The Senator Theatre and Dylan’s Oyster Cellar. You get to go aboard a Chesapeake deadrise work boat in search of crabs for Christmas, an inside joke about a holiday song played only around Baltimore.

Yeah, there are views of the Washington Monument and the Inner Harbor in the background, and even the Key Bridge before its collapse.

But they are seen the way most people in Baltimore see them — from a distance, from the window of a passing car or from the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill.

Despite the tagline, “A Christmas Love Story,” “Baltimorons” is a cousin to Barry Levinson and John Waters, and films like “Something The Lord Made” and “Charm City Kings.”

Leslie: Rick’s right that it’s a Baltimore movie, though as a native, I posit there is no definitive cinematic city experience. Waters’ Baltimore is different than Levinson’s and Laura Lippman’s, and theirs is very different than mine.

A lot of the places that Didi and Cliff wind up — like the 34th Street light display — weren’t part of my childhood because they took place on the other side of town, often in neighborhoods like Hampden where people that look like me were not historically welcome. We’ve yet to have our definitive Black Baltimore movie. I should write one.

Even with the differences, I recognize Didi and Cliff as intrinsically Baltimorean in that they are well-aware of their quirks, darkness and general inability to function in polite society when they are at their worst. Heck, even at their best! That makes me instantly love them more than most of the “Love Actually” characters, many of whom seem to believe that they, and their whimsical holiday hoo-ha, are adorable and significant.

Yes, even the dude stalking his best friend’s wife cause she said hi to him once, or whatever.

But not my girl Didi and my boy Cliff. They both know that not only are they personal messes, but that this thing between them, whatever it is, is strung together by circumstance, bad fortune with cops and tow trucks, and a desperate desire not to have to face their friends and family alone.

Rick: Strassner, who is from Baltimore County, is as Baltimore-dude as they come. Producer David Bonnet is from Baltimore, too. And if Larsen is from Philadelphia, she does a good Bawlmerese because the two cities are just different ends of the same culture pool. Everyone sounds and looks like you could bump into them on the way to an O’s game, right down to the fatalistic outlook on the season.

Every year, my family troops to a theater for a movie at Christmas, though not necessarily a Christmas movie. If this weren’t streaming already, I could see us bickering for days about it.

Because what good is seeing a movie if you can’t disagree over it for Christmas with people you love?

Leslie: As much as the plot of “Baltimorons” sounds like the setup to many a rom-com — two mismatched people who can only be together — “When Harry Met Sally” this is not. (I am still processing the death of director Rob Reiner and the wry joy he put into that movie.)

Didi and Cliff seem to know this is not a situation where, like Harry says, they are going to spend the rest of their lives with each other. This is a relationship that “Girl, what are you thinking with this guy?” conversations are made of. He’s an emotional wreck, in recovery and, at least when we meet him, engaged, and she knows she has to kick her habit of saving lost puppies like Cliff and her terrible ex.

What they are to each other is a way to get through the days when the tinsel tells you it’s all romantic and important, and you‘re just trying not to drink or hit anybody.

That you don’t is a Christmas miracle.

Just like John McClane saving the hostages in “Die Hard.”