Last Christmas (C+ or 2.5/4 stars)
I love Christmas. I love Christmas movies. I even like some Hallmark Christmas movies. I love Christmas carols. I love Christmas lights. I really like the 2 appealing stars of this film: Emilia Clarke (of Game of Thrones fame, Me Before You) & Henry Golding (of Crazy Rich Asians, A Simple Plan). I love Emma Thompson; she both acts in this & co-writes it; she's a fantastic Academy Award-winning actress & writer). I love London; and what's better than London during Christmastime? I admire that the characters are multi-cultural. And it's great that most of the main cast is so diverse. So ... why was this film, 'Last Christmas' (directed by Paul Feig) not a home run for me? More on that later.
Emilia Clarke stars as Kate, a trainwrecky 26 yr. old woman who lives in London but has nowhere to stay, what with being kicked out by her roommate, her behavior making her a bad house guest for her closest friends, & being estranged from her parents, overbearing Petra (Emma Thompson) & kindly Ivan (Boris Isakovic), and spiky sister, Marta (Lydia Leonard); all of whom fled the former Yugoslavia when Kate/Katarina was just a young girl. An aspiring singer-actress, she currently works in a quaint year-round Christmas shop run by a woman she only knows as Santa (Michelle Yeoh), but isn't too happy there or ... with most aspects of her life; this all goes back to a morbidly serious medical condition from her recent past.
But things change for the better when she meets Tom Webster (Henry Golding), a charming, handsome and - most importantly - optimistic man who makes it his mission to change Kate's self-destructive ways & outlook on life. Yet, even as their budding friendship seems to keep her afloat, and she tries to re-connect with her family, and while admirably she starts volunteering at a local homeless shelter {all good things!} ... her romantic longings for big-hearted Tom end up in conflict with his curious, unexplained absences. Is he too good to be believed? British holiday romcom hijinks ensue.
'Last Christmas' is the next of these movies whose soundtrack relies on the music of one artist/group: Queen for Bohemian Rhapsody, Elton John for Rocketman, The Beatles for Yesterday & Bruce Springsteen for Blinded by the Light. In blending music with story, 'LC' is not a successful as those others. This is not a particularly good movie, and yet, I can't hate on it. Despite a plethora of things that bugged me, it is shamelessly dedicated to shed light & kindness on its viewers for 102 minutes, & I couldn't help smiling throughout the final 15 minutes. I also had a hearty laugh at one of Emma Thompson's line deliveries involving the word "murdered". This film will not be remembered as a Christmas classic; I can think of tons, like It's a Wonderful Life or a Love, Actually. But there are juuust enough pleasantries {thanks mostly to the cast} to overcome the deficiencies in the script/direction.
I love the kind of clipped, razor-sharp brand of humor that British romcoms offer. But I can't say the Emma Thompson 'landed the plane' with her story/ jokes as well as she'd have liked too, this time. Sure, there's a nice mix of the sour with the sweet, here. But much of the dialogue is cliched & inane. Some of the many one-liners & zingers land, & some of them fall completely flat. Delivering banter at high speed does not necessarily make it clever. The main narrative seems ill-thought out. And a few of the characters are downright one-note; barely resembling real people, at all. For example, the subplot involving Michelle Yeoh {who I love} being smitten with a male customer is baffling in how precious, twee & forced it is.
Emilia Clarke's charm pierces through the angsty role that she has, here. Though perpetually flustered & making mistake after mistake, we still pull for her Kate because of Clarke's well-measured likability. She has a charismatic magnetism. So, too, does Henry Golding. Watching them individually is a joy. That said, due to the nature of the script {odd banter, the plot keeps them apart a lot}, any chemistry formed btwn. them felt labored, to me. And my final issue with this film: the music. We all love George Michael/Wham! But boy did many of his songs feel shoe-horned into the proceedings; providing bizarrely edited moments. 'Last Christmas' provides some holiday cheer, but it also contains false whimsy that made me wish it was better.
Emilia Clarke stars as Kate, a trainwrecky 26 yr. old woman who lives in London but has nowhere to stay, what with being kicked out by her roommate, her behavior making her a bad house guest for her closest friends, & being estranged from her parents, overbearing Petra (Emma Thompson) & kindly Ivan (Boris Isakovic), and spiky sister, Marta (Lydia Leonard); all of whom fled the former Yugoslavia when Kate/Katarina was just a young girl. An aspiring singer-actress, she currently works in a quaint year-round Christmas shop run by a woman she only knows as Santa (Michelle Yeoh), but isn't too happy there or ... with most aspects of her life; this all goes back to a morbidly serious medical condition from her recent past.
But things change for the better when she meets Tom Webster (Henry Golding), a charming, handsome and - most importantly - optimistic man who makes it his mission to change Kate's self-destructive ways & outlook on life. Yet, even as their budding friendship seems to keep her afloat, and she tries to re-connect with her family, and while admirably she starts volunteering at a local homeless shelter {all good things!} ... her romantic longings for big-hearted Tom end up in conflict with his curious, unexplained absences. Is he too good to be believed? British holiday romcom hijinks ensue.
'Last Christmas' is the next of these movies whose soundtrack relies on the music of one artist/group: Queen for Bohemian Rhapsody, Elton John for Rocketman, The Beatles for Yesterday & Bruce Springsteen for Blinded by the Light. In blending music with story, 'LC' is not a successful as those others. This is not a particularly good movie, and yet, I can't hate on it. Despite a plethora of things that bugged me, it is shamelessly dedicated to shed light & kindness on its viewers for 102 minutes, & I couldn't help smiling throughout the final 15 minutes. I also had a hearty laugh at one of Emma Thompson's line deliveries involving the word "murdered". This film will not be remembered as a Christmas classic; I can think of tons, like It's a Wonderful Life or a Love, Actually. But there are juuust enough pleasantries {thanks mostly to the cast} to overcome the deficiencies in the script/direction.
I love the kind of clipped, razor-sharp brand of humor that British romcoms offer. But I can't say the Emma Thompson 'landed the plane' with her story/ jokes as well as she'd have liked too, this time. Sure, there's a nice mix of the sour with the sweet, here. But much of the dialogue is cliched & inane. Some of the many one-liners & zingers land, & some of them fall completely flat. Delivering banter at high speed does not necessarily make it clever. The main narrative seems ill-thought out. And a few of the characters are downright one-note; barely resembling real people, at all. For example, the subplot involving Michelle Yeoh {who I love} being smitten with a male customer is baffling in how precious, twee & forced it is.
Emilia Clarke's charm pierces through the angsty role that she has, here. Though perpetually flustered & making mistake after mistake, we still pull for her Kate because of Clarke's well-measured likability. She has a charismatic magnetism. So, too, does Henry Golding. Watching them individually is a joy. That said, due to the nature of the script {odd banter, the plot keeps them apart a lot}, any chemistry formed btwn. them felt labored, to me. And my final issue with this film: the music. We all love George Michael/Wham! But boy did many of his songs feel shoe-horned into the proceedings; providing bizarrely edited moments. 'Last Christmas' provides some holiday cheer, but it also contains false whimsy that made me wish it was better.