(courtesy First Showing)
Christmas is a LOT.
Even if you love the season, and this reviewer loves like an elf excitedly stocking Santa’s sleigh before downing a vat of eggnog and decorating every tree in the garden, all of us reach a point, even for a second where it all just gets too much.
Ripe pickings for a Christmas comedy, right?
Yes, indeed and all manner of books, TV shows and movies have found fertile ground in mining the stresses and burdens of celebrating the most wonderful time of the year; unfortunately, despite trying its perfect Christmas heart out, Oh. What. Fun. is not one of them.
It starts off promisingly with uber-Texan mom Claire Clauster (Michelle Pfeiffer) going all out in typical fashion to make yet another Christmas as uniformly wonderful and joyful and precision-perfect for her family as possible.
She has decorations everywhere, meals mapped out and delivered down to the second and festive dance spectaculars booked for the whole family to attend – it’s everything Santa could have ordered, and more, and all Claire wants in return, via some very passive-aggressive text reminder is for her three kids to nominate her for a Best Holiday Mom contest, run by the Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria) who is a mix between Ellen Degeneres and Oprah Winfrey at their avuncular Christmas show bests.
It’s surely not too much to ask for, is it?
All Claire, who is a taut bundle of neediness, obsession and weirdly upbeat mum-ness, wants is for her children – eldest married novelist daughter Channing (Felicity Jones), lesbian daughter and serial dater Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) and slacker youngest kid and son Sammy (Dominic Sessa) – to nominate her as a Best Holiday Mom so she can selflessly(?) glory in the all of American acknowledging what a great festive mum she is.
But do they do that? They do not, and therein lies the seed for Claire’s eventual wigging out which, after being left behind, Home Alone-lite, as her family races off to see the dance show she’s booked, takes the form of her jumping in the car and driving all night from Houston, Texas to Burbank, California where she becomes a hero mum to mothers all across America who are tired of being taken for granted, at Christmas or any other time.
This should be a moment of viral impact, when we feel Claire’s pain, rail at the thoughtlessness of her children, and Channing’s partner Doug (Jason Schwartzman) and her grandkids, and everyone has a big hug, a life-changing confessional and everyone lives happily, and gratefully, ever after.
But here’s the thing – despite stuffing every possible slapstick moment, annoying character flaws and inciting incident into the screenplay, neither director and co-writer Michael Showalter nor co-writer Chandler Baker can make anything feel even slightly or remotely impactful.
It’s like someone took all the legitimate things that can go wrong at Christmas, neutered and dulled them down and then expected us to be moved by everything happening at the lowest possible volume and emotional intensity.
You get the impression that Oh. What. Fun. is aiming for a Family Stone level of genuinely affecting catharsis, but while all the pieces are largely presented and accounted for, and perfectly, deftly wrapped – there’s a scene where we see Claire wrapping up her family’s presents, alone while they do their own thing; the kicker is that we’re meant to think Claire is a saint and the family are sinners but honestly, none of them come out looking too good – none of them coalesce into anything that feel remotely impactful.
We see Sammy supposedly struggling to work out why his life is in the dump after his girlfriend dumps him right on the eve of them leaving for Christmas with his family, Taylor upset that the love of her life can’t understand why the love she professes is the real deal when there’s a long line of girlfriends to suggest it’s absolutely not, and Channing trying to hold it all together when her mum doesn’t seem to be able to connect with her.
Any and all of those issues could have been explored with some of dark and gritty honesty, but they all seem to peter out to nowhere, along with just every thread of Oh. What. Fun.
Even Claire’s big social media viral drive across a third of the United States to meet her hero, Zazzy Tims, who is mildly amusing but like almost all of Oh. What. Fun. underdone, doesn’t really gather up enough of a head of steam, any comic vivacity or impacting look at the human condition when placed under extraordinary festive stress disappearing into meaningless, fizzy ether.
Despite a slew of great character possibilities, narrative directions and social commentary moments, Oh. What. Fun. lands each and every one of its threads with the impact of a piece of tinsel wafting to the ground from a tree.
We should be laughing at the absurdity of it all, feeling sorry for Claire and feeling seen for the way we have taken for granted the engines of our festive celebrations; we should feel something, but apart from a cute scene or an inspired piece of dialogue there (Sammy confronting his is gently and effectively hilarious), you end up feeling not much at all.
Even the big moment when Channing and Claire finally talk it out, after honestly not much of a build-up, or husband Nick (Dennis Leary), so lacking in presence he almost didn’t make it into this review, have a weirdly truncated, near nothing heart-to-heart, all lazily curl up into nothing, the film so lacking in any real substance, comedic or otherwise, that, forget about it disappearing from your consciousness once the credits start rolling, you barely notice it when you’re watching it.
It’s a pity because the pieces are all there, and Oh. What. Fun. could be such, well, FUN, but despite it aiming for slapstick comedy gold and moments of openhearted Christmas honesty, the film barely touches the sides going down, all aim and intention with nothing much to recommend for execution.