Delayed Reaction: Happiest Season

Premise: Harper brings her girlfriend Abby home to meet her family who she's still hiding the fact that she's gay from.

 

I must say, I didn't expect the shitstorm of criticism that this movie has received. At least, not from the places it's received it. I first heard about the movie a couple weeks before it was released. It was presented as a Christmas movie with a gay couple, starring an absolutely stacked lineup of actors and actresses I love. It's a Christmas movie, so, naturally, I capped some of my expectations for writing and plotting. That's pretty much required for Christmas movies in general. Either expect that the movie comes 20 years out of date from the day it's released or prepare for a lot of contrivance. I mean, when was the last time you watched a Christmas movie and said "That was really smart and/or daring"? So, I watched Happiest Season excitedly Thanksgiving night and liked it.

 

Almost immediately though, my Twitter was buzzing with criticism of the movie. Like, really angry criticism. I guess I can't say I'm surprised by it, but it certainly has me wondering what movie people thought they were signing onto.

 

I'm getting ahead of myself though. Happiest Season is from writer/director Clea Duvall and writer/actress Mary Holland. They called in a stacked lineup of familiar actors like Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie, Burl Moseley, Dan Levy, Aubrey Plaza, Sarayu Blue, Jake McDormand, and Ana Gasteyer. It mainly centers on Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis: a long-time couple living happily together in a different city than Davis' family. Stewart's looking into proposing to Davis and is hoping to get the blessing from Davis' family, who she hasn't met before. Stewart lost her family a decade before and is excited to be part of a family again. On the drive to meet the family, Davis reveals that she hasn't told her family that she's gay and asks Abby to pretend that she's her roommate. More on this as well in just a moment, because I'd like to start with the good.

 

Overall, this ends up being a fairly charming movie due to the immense comedic talent of the cast. It's full of sibling rivalries and low stakes family scheming. Kristen Stewart comes out of this movie looking the best. While I love that she's a super-talented dramatic actress, movies like this and Charlie's Angels the last two years have me hoping that she always leaves some room for the fluff, because her ease and timing is great for them. She ends up having such good chemistry with Aubrey Plaza, as an old secret relationship of Davis', that I'm on board with the people who wish that Stewart and Plaza would've ended up together instead. Davis' character kind of sucks, which I blame more on writing than Davis. I also really enjoyed Mary Holland as Davis' sad-sack middle sister and Dan Levy as a friend Stewart checks in with. As far as studio Christmas movies go, this was an enjoyable one.

 

Obviously though, if you aren't inclined to like Christmas movies about affluent WASPy families who claim to be close but also seem to have no idea what's going on in each other's lives or movies that rely on unbelievable or dated constructs, then you will also be annoyed by this too. Simply starring a lesbian couple isn't going to fix all that. The premise of the movie is hopelessly backwards. If Davis and Stewart were about a decade younger, maybe, maybe I could buy into this story, but it's sure hard to understand how a woman in her late 20s/early 30s who lives her life out otherwise could keep her family in the dark so well. I mean, they are a reasonably tech-savvy family (her mom is on Instagram) who she appears to be on good terms with. How likely is it that they don't know or even suspect it? Isn't "she's my roommate" code for gay since...forever? * The movie tries to explain why Davis is still in the closet to them with a well-delivered Dan Levy speech, but it has to sell-out Davis' character so many times along the way to make it believable. So, by the end, it's hard to be rooting for that central relationship beyond the fact that this is a happy Christmas movie.

 

*This is where I throw in a caveat that I've never had to come out and I'm sure people can cite thousands of examples. I'm trying to think more in the text of this specific movie.

 

Personally, I would've much rather watched a movie about a lesbian couple with a big family who are working to win a big neighborhood house decoration competition than a shoehorned coming out story that suggests that the only stories about gay people worth telling are about how they reveal themselves to non-gay people. This is fine though. The big ask, really, of Happiest Season is that we treat it like any other Christmas movie. And, you know what? Next to the likes of Christmas with the Cranks and Four Christmases, it fits in pretty well. It's notably sillier than The Holiday or The Family Stone. It isn't as saccharine as Love, Actually. It's just another Christmas movie. Please approach it as that. It really is quite enjoyable if you can meet it at its level. If you can't, obviously, that's your prerogative and there are certainly things about it that some will find less forgivable than I did.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend