(courtesy IMP Awards)
If you only watch one parody of a festive romcom movie this year, and let’s face it, much as I love many of them, the actual films are almost parodies of themselves, then make sure it’s Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie.
The title alone should tip you off that the 23-minute homage to festive love’s many tropes and cliches but will not be subtle, no, not even a little bit, but as this special rapidly picks up a head of skewering steam, all it coming from the gloriously warped and very funny mind of Seth MacFarlane and his very clever team, it becomes clear that it’s not just Christmassy romcoms in the line of fire.
You do, of course, get all the usual box ticking done – Lois (Alex Borstein) is a classic festive romcom career gal who has sacrificed her life for becoming CEO of Big Pie; she has no time for love until that is she arrives in Townsville (a hilarious choice of name for any Australian viewers) and meets Peter (Seth MacFarlane) who it will not surprise you to learn is the town’s whimsically sleazy and rage-filled mechanic who also happens to run Maude’s Pies whose proprietary pie recipe Lois in in town to steal.
Thought she has years of singular career zeal behind her – you know she works hard because the opening scene shows her walking on and off subways and horse-drawn carriages and buses and even Segways, without even once losing concentration on her laptop and mobile phone – she, like so many Christmas romcoms before her, tosses it all away after just a couple days in another town with a man who, frankly, is a walking red flag (and not the festive kind that looks lovely fluttering on a balcony).
The parodic broad brushstrokes are exactly what you’d expect from a send-up like Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie; after all, the genre is so un-subtle and so lacking in nuance that the parodies can’t help but follow in the same highly obvious vein.
What Family Guy‘s often laugh-out-loud worthy take on the genre does so well is thrown in all of its trademark skewering of American society’s many, many faultlines, including the MAGA outlook so prevalent in many rural areas, the glaring red state/blue state (see the clip below) and the anti-woke brigade’s hatred of anyone not white and able-bodied, like, well, two regular two characters, Cleveland Brown (Arif Zahir) and Joe Swanson (Patrick Warburton) who are inserted in a scene that Peter observes, hilariously but tellingly, can be cut in “certain red states” without wrecking narrative continuity.
These jokes aren’t subtle but they’re not meant to be; in fact, all Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie is one big really obvious joke and it mostly works a treat.
It may not come close to reinventing the festive romcom parody genre, which is, yes, it’s own thing increasingly, but that’s not the point – it’s there to make us realise how absurd these stories are (the ending alone does that with mercilessly cruel hilarity) and that they are by any measure ridiculous.
And yet, even after watching and hugely enjoying Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie, and acknowledging every point it makes is blisteringly on point, you still want to watch and read more Christmassy romcoms because, well, let’s face it, who wants reality when it’s like a dumpster on fire?
Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy’s Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime’s Familiar Holiday Movie streams on Disney+