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| Emilia Clarke in Last Christmas. Image courtesy Universal Pictures. |
On many, many levels, Last Christmas is a bad film. It does so much wrong when it comes to writing,
plotting, comedy, and tone, coming out as a weird, awkward film that
basically rips off a Charles Dickens classic. And yet, for some
reason, I kind of like it anyway. Maybe it's due to the seasonal milieu, or the George Michael soaked soundtrack, or perhaps
a charming lead performance that lifts the film up just enough to make it work, kind of.
Last Christmas stars
Emilia Clarke as Kate, whose aspirations of a singing career have yet
to take off. Instead she spends her days working as an elf at an
all-year Christmas shop for the stern Santa (Michelle Yeoh), spending
her nights couch surfing, angering her friends, and hanging around
local pubs. All the while she does her best to avoid her mother Petra
(Emma Thompson, who co-wrote the film), father Ivan (Boris Isakovic),
and sister Marta (Lydia Leonard). Her life changes after a chance
encounter with the charmingly happy Tom (Henry Golding), who inspires
Kate to turn her life around. As Kate begins to regain her sense of
place, her relationship with Tom becomes a skosh more complicated
than expected.
Why is
the relationship so complicated? It's the result of a big old swerve
in the third act in which Last Christmas
takes the most literal interpretation of the opening line to the
eponymous song. It is a remarkably ludicrous twist, such a silly
little idea it's unclear how Thompson and writing partners Byrony
Kimmings and Greg Wise got this film made. And it gets even more
ridiculous when they and director Paul Feig try to justify the logic
behind this last-act reveal by ripping off a 20-year-old David
Fincher movie. The whole thing is madness, and I sort of love that
the filmmakers made a film with such a brilliantly misguided premise.
The
rest of the film's flaws are far less fun. Last Christmas
has a plethora of problems hosted within its script. The most basic
is an overload of exposition, particularly when it comes to Kate's
depiction of her family. She rants often about her dysfunctional
family, yet what the film shows is more kooky than properly broken,
which undermines the inevitable family reconciliation in the final
act. The film's tone is wonky as all heck, as if the script pulled
pieces from other movies and Frankensteined them together with some
holly and tinsel. There are so many montages of Kate apologizing for
being awful it undercuts her emotional voyage because all her
apologies feel far too easy because they're consolidated into
montages. Even with that consolidation there remains a slew of plot
holes and dropped storylines that make the film feel generally
incomplete, like Thompson and friends had an idea but never got
around to fleshing it out fully. Last Christmas
can't even end right, eliding right over an effective climax for an
unsatisfactory finish.
Last Christmas
has a few more subtle annoyances to go along with the blatant
problems. The filmmakers shame the hell out of Kate, chastising not
just her evenings out and mornings after but even her dreams of
becoming a singer. The film does a passing attempt at addressing the
wave of anti-immigration fervor and LGBTQIA issues but doesn't really
connect on either front. The former is undermined by a racially
tinged punchline by Petra. The latter is the addition of an
incredibly chaste lesbian relationship without depth or proper
narrative payoff. Like the rest of Last Christmas,
the ideas are there but the execution is all wrong.
Yet
despite all those issues there is something ultimately kind of
endearing about this movie. If Last
Christmas hits one's feels, it hits them because below the
chaos is a basic enough story of a person trying to find the good
inside herself. Feig, Thompson, and the rest of the filmmakers get
this one bit of storytelling correct, and Clarke does her best to
charm the audience into finding value in her character's redemption.
This might be the film's one real saving grace, and it's just enough
to make Last Christmas a bit charming, warts and all.
Review:
Two and a half out of Five Stars
Click
here
to see the trailer.
Rating:
PG-13
Run
time: 102 minutes
Genre:
Romantic Comedy
tl;dr
What
Worked: Emilia
Clarke, Michelle Yeoh
What
Fell Short: Writing,
Directing, Twist
What
To Watch Instead:
About
Time
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