Courtesy of Universal Pictures
by Daniel Andrade
I don’t know about you, but Christmas is my favorite time of the year. Some of my favorite songs and movies pop up around Christmas time. And as depressing as it is, I’ve always loved “Last Christmas” by George Michael. It’s one of those sneaky songs that sounds upbeat but actually hides a more sorrowful message; it’s heartbreaking, but it’s also relatable. So when I heard about a Christmas movie that featured the music of George Michael, named after my favorite song, I thought it would be a home run for me. Unfortunately, Last Christmas misses the mark and falls short of being another holiday classic.
Last Christmas tells the story of Kate, a.k.a. Katerina (Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame), a selfish, rude, and obnoxious woman working as an Elf at a quirky Christmas shop run by “Santa” (Michelle Yeoh, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many others). Her life is seemingly going nowhere until she meets Tom (Henry Golding, most notably known from Crazy Rich Asians), an eccentric and kind-hearted man who takes a shining to Kate. As she gets to know Tom better and open up to him, she realizes that she hasn’t been the best worker, friend, daughter, or sister, and starts to make positive changes in her life. Seems like a pretty straight-forward movie right?
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t move along as smoothly as you would expect. Many plot points are rushed, or sometimes altogether skipped over, which left me with a lot of lingering questions afterward. And without giving too much away, I’ll just tell you that I had a friend of mine figure out exactly how the story was going to play out, and he was able to guess all of that from the trailer alone. So it’s a predictable story but also takes too many odd twists and turns to get to that predictable outcome. It feels like this movie had certain lines or plot points that it wanted to hit, and cobbled up a story around those moments. Additionally, this movie tries to cram a lot of topics into its 100+ minute runtime: family, immigration, love, parental expectations, capitalism, community, and so much more. That’s a lot to try and cover in such a short amount of time, and as a result, many of these admittedly interesting themes are not given the attention they deserve.
As I stated earlier, one of the big selling points for me was the soundtrack. I’m a huge George Michael fan and was looking forward to seeing how the music was integrated into the story. But unfortunately, many of the songs were forced into the plot, making them feel odd and out of place. As for the title song, my favorite song, it was played at least four separate times, and even for a fan of that song, it was just too much. What’s more, the movie claims to be based on the song, but it seems to be based on the chorus alone, and barely so at that; it’s a tenuous connection at best.
Regarding the cast, I can’t really be too upset at them, they did the best with what they were working with. Emma Thompson was particularly enjoyable as the mother and had me genuinely laughing out loud with some of her lines. Clarke was very easy to dislike at first, but eventually, her charm shone through, and her singing was delightful. Golding maintains his charisma, even in some of his weirder or more random moments. Yeoh was amusing and had some funny lines as well, serving as a sort of secondary mother figure. There are two police officers in the film who steal the show whenever they pop up on the screen as well. There are some authentically charming and funny moments in this movie, but they are not enough to save the movie from being a disheveled mess, much like Kate was at the beginning of the movie.
CONCLUSION: While this movie does capture a bit of the holiday spirit with beautiful shots of a London winter wonderland and the warm and welcoming vibe of the Christmas shop where most of the movie takes place, it is too much of a jumbled mess to be considered a true holiday classic. The cast gives it their all with a script that feels rushed and random at times, providing some truly fun and charming moments that oftentimes save this movie from being a total flop. The incredible music of George Michael is many times shoehorned into moments that just don’t fit or feel right, or is awkwardly rearranged in ways that take out the impact of the lyrics. There are a lot of great parts to this movie, but they are just arranged in a haphazard way.
FINAL SCORE: 2/5
Comments