Reviewing a film as reviled as Last Christmas seems to be approximately eighteen months after its release is an interesting exercise.
There is the almost debilitating weight of all those negative judgements, some of them almost unnecessarily scathing, and of course, that twist, which while not even remotely in the same league as say, Sixth Sense and fittingly rom-comy, nevertheless hangs around this film like a second shoe waiting to clatter to the tinsel-covered floor.
In other words, approaching it with anything approaching viewing naivety is all but impossible, and yet, in the midst of a pandemic and a lockdown without here in old fair Sydney town, doing that just that seemed like a complete no-brainer.
Leave your preconceptions and whispered criticisms from seemingly the entire internet at the door and step right and see the Paul Feig-directed Last Christmas might take you.
The answer, as it turns out, is somewhere quite wonderful indeed.
While yes, the film is a little bit of a narrative and thematic mess, and tonally adrift in places, it is, on the whole, a thoroughly delightful piece of festive cinema, one of those films that wraps you in its expansively caring arms with all the love and possibility in the world and doesn’t let go for the duration.
Which is just as well because the heroine of the story, Katarina ‘Kate’ Andrich (Emilia Clarke), certainly has a lot to contend with before the inevitable redemptive Christmas rom-com arc kicks in,
Newly recovered from a major life-changing health event, one which has transformed who she is and what she wants from life and not really for the better, Kate is in a dark place.
Ironically for someone whose sole life ambitions seem to be getting roaringly drunk at every opportunity and sleeping with an endless conga line of available men, and who has her idiosyncratically overprotective immigrant Croatian mother Petra (Emma Thompson) in despair and her sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) exploding with sibling-specific animosity, Kate works as a costumed elf in a Christmas shop in London.
Yes, an archetypal Christmas shop, festooned with decorations and trees and thick twirls of tinsel, the kind that only seems to exist in the movies or American towns and malls, and which is every Christmasaholic dream retail destination.
It’s perfectly festive, the creation of Christmas tragic, Huang Qing Shin aka ‘Santa’ (Michelle Yeoh) who hired Kate back in the way because of her buoyant vivacity and undeniably genuine people skills but who is wondering where that bright, perky, wonderful person has gone.
The truth is her health issues which were as serious as they can get, and their subsequent remedy, the exact nature of which rides a Rudolph-led sleigh well into spoiler territory and so cannot be divulged, have left her shaken, grateful to be alive and not sure what she should do with her life.
So, she chooses to do not much at all, until, in the lead-up to Christmas, handsome bike rider and Good Samaritan, Tom Webster (Henry Golding) appears outside the window of the Christmas shop leading a meet-cute of sorts but not the kind that avowedly cynical Kate is willing to entertain with any seriousness.
And yet, this being a rom-com, and a festive on at that, Kate can’t help herself and in not time flat, Tom and Kate start seeing a lot of each other, skating illicitly on Christmas light bedecked skating rinks, looking up at quirky signs and avian sights (Tom is constantly entreating her to gaze upwards) and spending the kind of time together that suggesting something special is happening.
That something special, which keeps getting interrupted by Tom’s weird, unexplained absences – he says he has locked his phone in the cupboard and prefers to live in the moment rather than staring at a screen – sees Kate slowly come back alive, mending fences with her friends and family, volunteering at a homeless shelter and giving up dreams of fame and glory in West End musicals in favour of living a life of giving and caring.
Sound all a little bit mushy? Well, it is, but Last Christmas is a festive film and a romantic comedy in one, so only the perpetually hard of heart should expect anything else.
Soundtracked by a judicious and perfectly placed selection of 14 tracks by George Michael and Wham! including of course “Last Christmas” in myriad forms, which give a luminous warmth and loveliness to the film, as well as giving darker scenes some extra gravitas, and set in multiple light-filled picture-postcard perfect London settings, Last Christmas is a well-judged piece of festive hopefulness that actually manages to inject some real, affecting humanity into proceedings.
For all its tinsel weight trappings and sometimes muddled execution, Last Christmas is at heart a redemptive tale that takes the time to give us a character who has obviously got a lot of spark and ambition for life but whose recent traumatic experiences have sent her spinning off into a strange listless oblivion.
The scenes where Kate trades sassy comeback lines and witty dialogue for some deep and meaningful introspection and copious amount of soul-weary tears feel desperately, spirit-shatteringly real.
Don’t expect a gritty slice of Oscar worthy filmmaking; it’s simply not that film and doesn’t need to be or position itself as such.
Rather, Last Christmas manages, far better than many lighter-than-air Christmas feelings, to make the final act payoff seem worth all the effort with Kate’s transformation feel reasonably well-earned and as authentic as you’re going to get in a film of this genre.
Sure, it’s all fairytale magical and impossibly over the top perfect by the time a renewed Kate sets everything right, but that’s precisely what you’re wanting and Feig and the cast deliver it with a solidly grounded serve of reality, or at least enough that the final scenes of the movie feel authentically, emotionally true.
The twist when it does come is wrenching – it’s odd to think you couldn’t feel as if your heart is being unceremoniously pulled from your chest as you watch it – and gives an emotional muscularity and punch to all the glittery redemptiveness and smiles, proof that you can have a light, warm and fuzzy festive film and still feel as if you have someone climb honestly and truly from the darkness of the worst of life back to its shiny, life-affirming best.
Be cynical about this film as much as you want, and sink it under its flaws if you so wish, but in doing so, you’ll miss out on the weight and meaningfulness and sheer festive wonder of Last Christmas, a film that wears its heart very much on its sleeve, decorates it with tinsel and ornaments and dares you not so sigh quiet joy that life can be made better by the most unexpected of means.