Happiest Season
Admittedly, in this silly thing me and Lisa do in chatting about Hallmarky Holiday movies, Hulu’s Happiest Season doesn’t really fit. This movie follows the path of a traditional RomCom more so than a Hallmarky Holiday movie, but this is one of those occasions where I’m of the opinion that this film would have served itself much better if had actually followed the Hallmarky formula.
Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) are two kids living in the big city, and these two kids love each other. Like… a LOT. Like… if you ever wanted to watch two women make out a LOT, then this is the movie for you. I don’t think I’ve seen a ‘straight’ movie where two characters kissed more than these two. I hope Mackenzie and Kristen got along on this set. And just to get this out of the way, having two same-sex characters in your movie making out does NOT make your movie ‘progressive’. At the baseline it just means you have a crap movie with gay characters in it, and it’s up to the filmmakers to bring it up from there.
After a spirited night of running through the town, doing stuff and making out, Harper invites Abby, who is Christmas ambivalent, to her hometown for her annual family Christmas gathering. Thing is Abby was drunk with love that night and she forgot she hadn’t quite come out to the family yet, though she told Abby she did. Harper tried to weasel out of it the next morning but now Abby is excited to meet the people ‘who made her most favorite person in the world’. Here, in a normal world, is where Harper tells Abby the truth and Abby stays home a little peeved at her one true love, but no, she waits until they are almost at the doorstep tell her this truth and the gargantuan lie she has told her parents about her ‘orphan roommate’ who she’s bringing along for the Christmas gathering. I get it… a movie has to happen so we will deal with it.
So Abby meets the folks, who are generally conservative homophobes, she meets Harper’s sisters Jane (Marie Holland) who is quirky and weird, and Sloane (Allison Brie) who hates Harper and vice versa. Hate to spoil it for you, but the moment we met Sloane we kinda know she is going to find out Harper’s secret and spill the beans. But you will know this too.
Surprise, Harper treats Abby like total crap while she’s at her folks home, consistently. And she learns things about Harper that she never told Abby which makes Harper appear even worse. And she gets to hang with Harpers gawdawful family which amazingly makes Harper even worse. Things get so bad that Abby comes to the sad realization that she might've made a serious mistake in even hooking up with this abysmal chick. That is until Harper delivers her ‘Say Anything’, ‘You Had me At Hello’ speech at the end the kids make out again and all is well… at Christmas.
First off, the only reason I watched this movie in the first place is because Dan Levy and his unstoppable eyebrows were in this movie and Dan Levy is my main dude, and he was good in this. In fact casting was not an issue with ‘Happiest Season’ as it has one of the strongest casts, top to bottom, of any movie I’ve seen this year and the year is almost over… but I did not care for this movie.
I understand that this is not a Hallmarky styled Holiday romance movie, but this one could’ve taken a page or two from that genre. You see, veterans of this genre know that if the heroine of the movie has a boyfriend at the beginning of the movie, she will have a different, better boyfriend at the end of the movie. Obviously because her previous boyfriend was ass. In this movie, Harper was ass, and I'm pretty sure that even someone who was to declare this their favorite movie ever, would not disagree with me on this. There’s not coming out to your family, I get that… then there’s treating the woman claim to love like absolute garbage while not coming out to your family. I don’t get that. Plus, similar to a Hallmark movie, a better mate showed up later on in Aubrey Plaza’s character of Riley, who ALSO suffered abuse at the hands of Harper, because Harper is the worst. Harper is the character in a Hallmark movie who closes the cookie factory, forecloses on the orphanage and plans to demolish an old folks home to build condos all rolled into one. If this were a Hallmarky movie, Abby and Riley would’ve been making out in the falling snow and Harper, rightfully so, would’ve been left alone with her extremely dysfunctional family at Christmas to ponder her terrible decisions, and I would’ve be okay with that.
No, what we had here was a traditional RomCom with girl having girl, girl losing girl, then girl inexplicably getting girl back with a lot of shenanigans in-between, with these shenanigans somehow devolving into complete slapstick. Some of it was actually funny, most anything that came out of Dan Levy’s mouth was either funny and / or sweet and insightful. Alas since I felt the actual romance in this movie was a farce, and that Abby deserved much better, how can I like this movie?
But that’s just my opinion. Just because I seem to have an issue in which absolutely terrible, over-privileged people undeservingly have everything work out for them just perfectly in the end, doesn’t mean that you will have that same problem. Then by all means, have a blast with ‘Happiest Season’.
Comments
Post a Comment