The Christmas Rom-Com has become such a stable part of the holiday season, that not only has it chiseled itself out its own genre of film that is utilized around Christmas time every year, but its also led way to several films that people adore not for their quality, but rather their hilariously awful nature. Whether through the Hallmark channel which is bound to cause Eggnog indigestion in several people that view them, to the boatload of Netflix originals that allow lesser known actors to try and make a comeback through the most pleasant and less threatening way (Vanessa Hudgens and Lindsey Lohan get a lot from this angle), the Christmas rom-com is like the over-the-top kitsch present you get for Christmas; you know its bad and lame, but you laugh at how bad and lame it is and clearly appreciate how in-your-face Christmas it is. So, in an ironic twist, can a Christmas rom com actually be worse the more competent it is? Last Christmas is definitely proof that this is true. A young aspiring singer named Kate (played by Emilia Clark) is slugging her way through life after a dangerous surgery when she was younger left her feeling half-alive and now finds no passion in her current living standards. She moved away from her Yugoslavian family to get away from her depressed and overbearing mother Petra (played by Emma Thompson) and instead coach-jumps from friend to friend and finds her dead-end job at a year-round Christmas store run by her boss whose stupidly nicknamed Santa (played by Michelle Yeoh) degrading and unfulfilling against the constant failing she receives from going to auditions. While going through all this turmoil, she notices a man who constantly seems to be around when she needs him. She quickly realizes that he isn’t in fact a stalker and is instead a night-time delivery man named Tom Webster (played by Henry Golding) and the two slowly start to form a bit of a romance together. Through his mere existence it seems, Kate finally sees that her life should be worth more than what she’s giving it and puts in more effort to make amends with those she knows as well as give back to those less fortunate than her, all the while Tom hides a secret that needs to be revealed to Kate sooner rather than later. From the synopsis, this movie sounds like it would be premium Christmas cheese but is instead just slightly dry and bitter fruitcake.

From most of the advertising, you would believe that this was going to be a cinematic Christmas rom-com from everything down to the writing, the visuals, the tone, even the choice of actors, it all feels like it’s trying to replicate what those Christmas rom-coms do just with a bigger budget and slightly bigger cast. The premise alone feels like it could only exist in this sub-genre of film as its incredibly small in scale and simplistic, to the point where even casual rom-coms have more to stretch out the running time than this film, but its even more basic than you’d imagine as the plot is incredibly bare-bones and has about as much meat and content to offer as the synopsis states that it does (that small blurb at the top really is what this movie is beginning to end). It even took inspiration from the popular song, Last Christmas, from the famous British pop duo Wham! which means its not going to have much to work with outside of a very truncated narrative with cliched rom-com plots added in as well to increase the running time. What’s funny about this is that despite what the movie eventually reveals itself to be about with a pointless last-minute twist that completely changes the mood and feel of this movie, all it actually does is show that it held what could’ve made this movie more entertaining hostage just to leave it for a stupid heart-tugging twist reveal. That’s the movie’s biggest flaw; it pretends like it’s about something meaningful and deep when its obviously not and it shields itself from having fun and going crazy with these obvious generic and/or stupid characters and plot-lines because it’s trying to pretend like its not an actual Christmas rom-com. It’s a weird in-between state where the movie is technically a better made movie with at least a competent structure, message, and performances. But because of that, there’s nothing special or innocently humorous about this movie, leaving it a stale, generic waste of a viewing experience. Paul Feig as the director also feels like a really random and odd choice, considering his work is usually female-centric and overly crude comedies, which results in this film feeling weak and bland in its presentation with occasional spouts of random dirty jokes and crude and overly written dialogue.

All the actors are playing their parts like they have an awareness of the stupid film they’re in, but like everything else in this film, its not quite to the point where its enjoyably bad or even that bad all around. From a basic standpoint, no performer is truly awful and manages to get through their scenes with enough credibility that it ironically sucks out any fun or enjoyment that could come from this kind of material. They all have that whimsically enchanted vibe that comes across as hoaky and like a performance rather than feeling legitimate, but the film’s need to try and desperately make what they’re talking about mean so much more than it deserves just leads to several moments that feel too mature for this kind of movie (clearly a movie of this caliber deserves to talk about immigration and coming out to your family), and it just doesn’t leave the correct impression on people when they could’ve had something more enjoyably quirky and odd if they didn’t feel the need to keep the movie’s hook a secret. Emilia Clark is playing the generic down-on-her-luck rom-com regular girl (which of course means she’s still beautiful and talented in almost every regard), Emma Thompson weirdly plays her Yugoslavian mother with a thick accent and an overbearing nature (she does the accent fine but it’s still really bizarre), Michelle Yeoh just feels like the stuck-up boss figure seen in most of these rom-coms, Henry Golding is the typical wide-eyed and irresistibly charming male counterpart whose come to changes things around in the lead’s life, and the rest of the cast are just colorful people who can very easily range between bland and forgettable or just plain annoying. This cast is filled with talented people and none of them feel like they aren’t putting in the effort to make this work, it’s just that the peak of what the material offers is not good enough to be worth remembering, tragically keeping it out of the flip-side where its awkward but far more enjoyable to watch.

From a production level, the movie’s budget seems decent enough with 25 – 30 million, but this film doesn’t really have many opportunities to showcase anything out of the ordinary due to how straightforward the film is presented from a narrative or even visuals standpoint. Even for a movie based around Christmas, a lot of the subject matter discussed has very little to due with the season, only popping up because Clark’s character works at a Christmas store (which is Christmas every day of the year anyway, so it almost doesn’t matter from that perspective), and most of the time the film just shows these basic looking buildings or streets at night-time. It weirdly feels like it couldn’t or even didn’t utilize its budget, but again it’s not surprising as this movie has very little to show off outside of some Christmas-themed areas and festive performances. For a movie that’s based on a popular Wham! Song, the movie also uses a lot of the band’s music in its soundtrack to make it feel like it’s a movie that’s attached to the artist. It thankfully never goes too far with it and makes it a juke-box musical as that would’ve been an entirely different film on its own, but on the other hand, most of the music is so sparingly used and randomly placed in that it barely leaves an impression and outside of a single song that Clark sings to close the film out with (which is the titular song in itself so it kind of needs to do that), it doesn’t really take advantage of having these songs. The writing for this movie from Emma Thompson along with screenwriter Bryony Kimmings and story writer Greg Wise, isn’t too strong and the humor for the film is very fast-paced and overly talk-heavy, leaving very little breathing time for anything to leave an impression or for the actors to leave any charm or energy, it just feels like its on fast-forward so much that nothing is fun or worth listening to.

Last Christmas sours what could’ve been a sweet enough time by ironically not being bad enough to warrant being a cheesy but enjoyably dumb Christmas rom-com. Its an enigma of a genre that it would be praised moreso for being ironically good as opposed to legitimately good, but maybe because they feel aware that they can’t make these cliched storylines good so by making them over-the-top, cheesy, and silly as anything, it at least offers something fun and bizarre to witness. This movie thinks that its above that genre, when in actuality removing that title makes it even less than what it would be with it attached. The film on its own isn’t the worse thing to sit through, even by most rom-com standards, it’s at least not painfully hard to get through, but this capable presentation takes away from the movie and makes it more horribly bland and forgettable than anything outright awful. The directing is mismatch but not terrible, the actors are generic and not household names, but not unknown names either, and while the movie definitely isn’t fun and is written pretty poorly from a comedic and narrative standpoint, its need to force some overly sappy message into this generic picture leaves what could’ve been fun over-the-top goofiness out of the question. Decide for yourself if this film is worth your time, or if you’d rather go back to just listening to the song.

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