(courtesy IMDb (c) Netflix))
Love conquers everything, right?
Throw a difficulty at it, an obstacle, a threat or a challenge and it simply laughs in dismissive regard and plows on its merry rose-covered, starry-eyed, warm and fuzzy way.
That’s what we’re sold, anyway and it’s what initially seems to be the case in Christmas as Usual (Så Var Det Jul Igjen) in which Norwegian expat Thea (Ida Ursin-Holm) and Indian expat Jashan (Kanan Gill) are loved up and living in California, together less than a year but certain they know they are meant to be together forever.
Well, Jashan is anyway and with the relationship less than a year old, he proposes certain Thea is his destiny and that together they can face anything, including Christmas with Thea’s family back in Norway where tradition is everything.
EVERYTHING.
The great festive fly in the ointment here is that Thea hasn’t told anyone her new boyfriend is Indian, referring to him as Josh and so when they arrive for what’s supposed to a grand Christmassy homecoming, mum Anne-Lise (Marit Andreassen) initially picks the very blond taxi driver as her daughter’s boyfriend and not the extremely handsome Indian guy getting the suitcases out of the boot.
Anne-Lise does her best to paper over her surprise but its obvious that she’s not expecting “Josh” to be so, well, NOT Norwegian, a shock factor that carries over to son, and Thea’s brother Simen (Erik Follestad) and meek and lovely wife Hildegunn (Veslemøy Mørkrid) who arrive with cute as buttons daughter Ronja (Matilde Hovdegard) who turns out later to be the preternaturally sage voice of relationship wisdom (a little too late narratively wise, as it turns out).
Now, at this point, it’s abundantly clear, for this is not a subtle film by any measure, that Christmas as Usual (Så Var Det Jul Igjen) is aiming to be a bright and jolly comedy of opposites, a test of love in an environment where Christmas traditions are paramount, where they MUST be observed and where the wearing of festive jumpers and the eating of certain foods on certain days has the unquestioned rigour of high holy writ.
It could have really played on all the things that confound a goodhearted Jashan, leaving him floundering in all the festive strangeness until the family, and especially Thea, who should have his back, realise what they have done and rescue him, and them, from the social awkwardness and embrace and make up until everyone is blissfully, acceptingly happy at Christmas as the laws of festive filmmaking demand.
(courtesy IMDb (c) Netflix)
But that, alas, is not what happens, and while Jashan does make some ill-advised gung-ho mistakes such as making curry one night on what is bitte lille julaften or Teeny Tiny Christmas (22 December) and not simply smiling and going with the family’s legalistically festive flow, it’s the family that come across as belonging, says “Shazam”, as Anne-Lise is thoughtlessly wont to call him, to a “crazy Christmas cult”.
He is dragged into all kinds of uncomfortable situations including a pin-drop quiet church where everything is understandably sung in Norwegian and to an icy-block filled pool where he isn’t warned how cold it will be and expected to just join in with no explanation from anyone, again especially Thea and no one making any allowances for them.
The family seem to be outwardly nice people but in the clumsy script of Christmas as Usual (Så Var Det Jul Igjen), which is all slipping on cultural and racial banana peels to an almost cringeworthy degree, they come across as pretty awful people.
Granted they do wise up in the last 15 minutes or so when Jashan has wisely fled to the airport to escape the intended but far from funny farcical madness, but by then you simply don’t care if Thea gets to the gate in time to tell Jashan she really does love him, even though she’s just spent the better part of the film throwing him to her family’s festive wolves.
We are meant to believe the family is in the grip of grief after the death only a year earlier of the Christmas-loving patriarch of the family, and while this might have softened the hard racially harsh edges somewhat, it’s barely given any narrative air, and what could have been a silly comedy of errors and misunderstanding simply becomes wearing.
The moments between Thea and Jashan are for the most part rather sweet, and Gill does a fine job of humourously adlibbing his way through some of the monstrously Christmas moments – he has to employ all this stand-up skills to full effect but he manages to sort of rescue some scenes while everyone else falls into a chasm of unkindness – but in the end while it has the requisite redemptive ending, Christmas as Usual (Så Var Det Jul Igjen) fails to be much more than a festive misfire.
Whatever playful non-meeting of the minds it was aiming for is lost in what simply comes across as nasty non-acceptance by a family so wedded to their Christmas traditions that they won’t make any allowance, and I mean none, for someone from the outside who, yes, is less than delicate in a strangely fraught situation, but who needs to be shown some consideration and care.
He’s shown next to none, and while you want to lean into what the film meant to be, and you desperately want to embrace the film’s sugar and spice ending where all is forgiven and they become one big happy family – would you want to join them after what they put you through? No thanks – RUN! – you end up viewing Christmas as Usual (Så Var Det Jul Igjen) as a massive mistake, the kind of film that wanted tio show how wacky Christmas can be but simply comes across as unfunny, cold and cruel and which proves that while love can theoretically withstand everything, perhaps an ill-thinking Norwegian family does have the power to best it and almost ruin the most wonderful time of the year for everyone.