Post by Dracula on Dec 25, 2020 11:24:33 GMT -5
Happiest Season(12/19/2020)
Happiest Season was meant to in some ways be the first real LGBT romantic comedy from a major studio, but Sony Pictures ended up having to sell it to Hulu because of the pandemic, in part because its holiday setting meant that delaying it would effectively force it to sit on the shelf an entire year. The film follows a lesbian couple played by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis who are planning a trip to the Mackenzie Davis character’s parents’ house for the holidays but as they’re driving there she reveals to her girlfriend that she isn’t actually out of the closet to her family and that she intends to claim that they’re just platonic roommates when they get there. Hijinks ensue. There is a lot to like about Happiest Season; it’s got a solid cast and Stewart in particular proves to be a strong lead, it’s pretty well written in terms of dialogue and jokes, and the base story would seem to have potential. Unfortunately there’s a bit of a rot at the center of it all in that this is all leading up to (spoilers, I guess) a profoundly unearned happy ending.
There’s a bit of a rote trope in traditional romantic comedies where, leading into the third act, the couple at the center splits apart over some nonsensical misunderstanding only to then be brought together by a grand gesture at the end. It’s easy to scoff at this cliché, but you start to see why writers use silly misunderstandings to make this happen when you see a movie like this were a comparable split happens at the two thirds point less out of a dumb mistake and more because of an entrenched flaw in the relationship that really should break people up and not bring them together again just because they make a heartfelt speech afterwards. That’s what happens here; the fact that the Davis character springs this situation on the Stewart character is borderline deranged and she spends 80% of the movie treating her terribly and basically proving to the audience that she’s kind of undeserving of Stewart (or anyone else) until she rids herself of her obvious self-loathing. To the movie’s credit, it’s not unaware of a lot of this and does express how bad this character is behaving in various ways, but it ultimately wants to have it both ways despite this and the ending feels false and contrived because of this.
There could have been ways to make this work at least a little better. Had they made the characters a bit younger and less mature that might have made some of the Davis characters’ mistakes a bit more understandable and forgivable. The film also might have made a bit more sense if it had been set in an earlier time period where this degree of pressure to stay in the closet was more palpable. Alternatively the film also might have at least put you in the characters’ headspace a bit more if it had actually depicted her parents as being the kind of overt homophobes for whom this kind of charade might have actually felt necessary in order to please but it instead rather timidly tries to sell them less as fanatical religious bigots and more as simply being control freaks who go to extreme lengths to make their family seem “perfect” to the outside world. I can kind of see why they tried to avoid that route as they likely calculated that depicting these parents as monsters who are not worthy of impressing would also throw the movie off, but they were kind of in a catch-22 because making them ultimately reasonable people for who none of this was actually all that necessary doesn’t work either. Anyway, if you can look past all that you’ll probably like this movie, it’s well made otherwise but to me that central flaw kind of sinks it.
**1/2 out of Five
Happiest Season was meant to in some ways be the first real LGBT romantic comedy from a major studio, but Sony Pictures ended up having to sell it to Hulu because of the pandemic, in part because its holiday setting meant that delaying it would effectively force it to sit on the shelf an entire year. The film follows a lesbian couple played by Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis who are planning a trip to the Mackenzie Davis character’s parents’ house for the holidays but as they’re driving there she reveals to her girlfriend that she isn’t actually out of the closet to her family and that she intends to claim that they’re just platonic roommates when they get there. Hijinks ensue. There is a lot to like about Happiest Season; it’s got a solid cast and Stewart in particular proves to be a strong lead, it’s pretty well written in terms of dialogue and jokes, and the base story would seem to have potential. Unfortunately there’s a bit of a rot at the center of it all in that this is all leading up to (spoilers, I guess) a profoundly unearned happy ending.
There’s a bit of a rote trope in traditional romantic comedies where, leading into the third act, the couple at the center splits apart over some nonsensical misunderstanding only to then be brought together by a grand gesture at the end. It’s easy to scoff at this cliché, but you start to see why writers use silly misunderstandings to make this happen when you see a movie like this were a comparable split happens at the two thirds point less out of a dumb mistake and more because of an entrenched flaw in the relationship that really should break people up and not bring them together again just because they make a heartfelt speech afterwards. That’s what happens here; the fact that the Davis character springs this situation on the Stewart character is borderline deranged and she spends 80% of the movie treating her terribly and basically proving to the audience that she’s kind of undeserving of Stewart (or anyone else) until she rids herself of her obvious self-loathing. To the movie’s credit, it’s not unaware of a lot of this and does express how bad this character is behaving in various ways, but it ultimately wants to have it both ways despite this and the ending feels false and contrived because of this.
There could have been ways to make this work at least a little better. Had they made the characters a bit younger and less mature that might have made some of the Davis characters’ mistakes a bit more understandable and forgivable. The film also might have made a bit more sense if it had been set in an earlier time period where this degree of pressure to stay in the closet was more palpable. Alternatively the film also might have at least put you in the characters’ headspace a bit more if it had actually depicted her parents as being the kind of overt homophobes for whom this kind of charade might have actually felt necessary in order to please but it instead rather timidly tries to sell them less as fanatical religious bigots and more as simply being control freaks who go to extreme lengths to make their family seem “perfect” to the outside world. I can kind of see why they tried to avoid that route as they likely calculated that depicting these parents as monsters who are not worthy of impressing would also throw the movie off, but they were kind of in a catch-22 because making them ultimately reasonable people for who none of this was actually all that necessary doesn’t work either. Anyway, if you can look past all that you’ll probably like this movie, it’s well made otherwise but to me that central flaw kind of sinks it.
**1/2 out of Five
