(courtesy IMDb)
Your Christmas or Mine?
Coming with an inventive take on a romcom, let alone a festive romcom where the rules are even more restrictive, is no easy undertaking.
But somehow Your Christmas or Mine manages it, delivering a story that, sure, strains the bounds of credibility but then what romcom doesn’t, but which is fun, inventive and ultimately just the right amount of heartfelt.
It’s Christmas Eve … Eve and newly-minted drama students, Hayley and James (Cora Kirk and Asa Butterfield) are heading back to their respective families for Christmas, sad to be without each other but quite yet ready to go and do the full relationship reveal.
Turns out that each of them have got very good reasons why they can’t come clean about the fact that, three months into their course, they are in LOVE, and that getting on separate trains on a snowy 23 December is a good idea all round.
But then, there’s good ideas and there’s what the heart wants, and, after sitting in their respective trains for but a moment, they both impulsively get off them and head to the other’s train to have Christmas with them.
You can see where this is going, right?
James gets on Hayley’s train. Yay BUT Hayley, oh yes she is, on James’s train and with the carriages packed with people and no way to tell if their beloved is near them or not, they take on trust that they are there somewhere and they’ll be reunited when they reach their destination.
But as James gets off at Hayley’s destination, he finds himself without a girlfriend in much the same way that Hayley finds herself all along on a very snowy station with no sign of anyone.
Cue a crash course in each person finding out way more about their partner’s family than they bargained on this early on, a ton of hilarity as wacky assumptions and misunderstandings abound, and quite a lot of feels as some big long-lost held secrets and family pain gets sorted, simply because an outsider come and crashed the festive part.
Warm funny, sweet and delightful in every way, Your Christmas or Mine isn’t a bold reinvention of the festive romcom but it’s so smartly written and so beautifully acted – standouts are Hayley’s dad and Mum, Geoff and Kath (Daniel Mays and Angela Griffin respectively) and James aka Hubert’s dad Humphrey (Alex Jennings) – and has such a vibrant sense of raw, quite emotional humanity, all very honestly expressed, that it carries a lot more heft than your average Christmas romcom.
This is THE film you need if you feel love can’t win, if you think your family is too OTT to be loving enough and if you wonder if there is a way back to fun and frivolity of the seasonal kind when grief has sunk its claws and won’t relinquish it happiness-crushing grip.
You will be smiling like an elf who’s had way too many candy canes (is there such a thing?) and feel your heart swell as all the chaotic hilarity, which is gleefully entertaining in itself, gives way to an ending which is honest and heartfelt without being twee and which reassures that Christmas can be all the good and wonderful things you dreamed and might even manage to better them in manically hilarious but soul reviving fashion.
Your Christmas or Mine? streams on Prime Video.
Your Christmas or Mine 2
Can sequels ever be as good as the film that first captured your moviegoing and, in this case, Christmas-loving heart?
Usually not, but the good news is that Your Christmas or Mine 2, transplanted to Innsbruck, Austria, where surely the risk of ending up in separate locales is much reduced, comes very close, capturing the same warmth, sense of fun and loved-up sweetness that its predecessor had in spades.
The premise this time is that instead of letting “His Lordship” (aka Humphrey Hughes, played by Alex Jennings) organise and pay for everything, because “they don’t do charity”, the family of Hayley (Cora Kirk), one half of the couple at the centre of the series, decide they’ll book their own accommodation.
Well, dad Geoff (Daniel Mays) does, assuring dubious wife Kath (Angela Griffin), that his mate has stitched them up a grand deal and they will have a Christmas every bit as lavish as Humphrey promised them.
Of course, that’s not even remotely what happens, and it turns out that Geoff’s onetime travel agent friend has booked them into a drafty wooden shed on the edge of the Alps with a pit toilet and an angry black Tyrolean goat for company.
But naturally, this being Your Christmas or Mine 2, Geoff et al – and the whole gang is back bar cranky grandma including single sister Kaye Gumede (Natalie Gumede), wise grandfather (Ram John Holder) who’s thankfully given more to do this time around, and Hayley’s younger brothers Ant and Dec (Joseph Obasohan and Harris Kiiza respectively – don’t end up in the ramshackle shack but in the uber-lux hotel booked by Humphrey.
And so it is that Hubert James (Asa Butterfield), Humphrey, his dad Jack (David Bradley) and Humphrey’s new American girlfriend, Diane (Jane Krakowski in trademark sparkling form) end up battling goat and sub-par accommodation, without their luggage too, while Geoff, Kath etc live it up in the lap of luxury.
It doesn’t quite carry the oomph emotionally or comedically of the first film’s switched trains premise but it’s still a lot of fun because of the finely wrought, fully realised characterisation of the first film, which means Your Christmas or Mine 2 has plenty of places to go gag-wise and that it’s able to enact some out-there ideas without overstaying its welcome.
Yes, the rift that develops, and is sealed because this is a romcom about true love at Christmas, and that never stays sundered and broken for long, feels a tad contrived, and it’s resolved a little too easily, but hey, Hayley and James make such a loved-up adorable couple, who are MEANT TO BE TOGETHER, that you’re happy to take pretty much anything Your Christmas or Mine 2 serves up.
That’s largely because the writing remains tight, the film character-centric and the performances tight and charmingly meaningful, with the film even stopping itself from turning Diane into a grating caricature; sure, she is a wealthy American obsessed with her bestselling book and her celebrity fad diets etc, but she’s also shown to have a heart and a thoughtfulness that means she is every bit as well realised as anyone else.
It means that Your Christmas or Mine 2 packs a real punch emotionally and that you keep on laughing, because this extended odd-couple family are the sort of people you want together and that you want around, especially at Christmas because they embody the idea that two different worlds can unite, sort of, well, not really but enough anyway, and that even if they can’t, Hayley and James will be together come what may and unite two wholly different life views regardless.
It’s a joy, it’s hilarious, it’s heartfelt and it’s away from Macklesfield, and while Kath etc end up wishing they were home, with laser ten pin bowling and their Christmas traditions, Your Christmas or Mine 2 is a tonic for world-weary soul, a paean to love, the festive season and the idea that anything is possible at the most wonderful time of the year … even in Austria.
Your Christmas or Mine 2 streams on Prime Video.
Is there a third film in the offing? Not quite, but Asa Butterfield would love it if there was …