LAST CHRISTMAS — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

Here’s a strange and unusual thing for the holiday season: a movie in which nearly everyone is phoning it in—except, curiously, the actors. It’s easy to dismiss a film as schmaltzy as Last Christmas outright (and I was tempted), but that itself can be a sort of trap. Emilia Clarke gives a lovely performance as Kate, the central character gradually revealed to have made a mess of her life in the wake of a heart transplant. And Emma Thompson exceeds expectations as her Yugoslavian immigrant mother.

Still, Last Christmas has a pretty big problem, and I mean besides the hokey fact that it’s loosely based on a song by WHAM! It features some solid characters, who could be the building blocks of a great story. Paul Feig, as director, and Emma Thompson, as co-writer (along with Bryony Kimmings), seem to know of this potential, and yet they couldn’t be bothered. It’s like they got to the point of half-baked and then they all decided, well, that’s good enough!

Except it really isn’t. Spoiler alert! There’s a so-called “massive twist.” I won’t reveal the twist here, although if you’ve seen the trailer you’ve already figured it out, and it is practically slapping the viewer in the face with “hints” the moment Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) appears onscreen as Tom, the mysterious man who takes an interest in Kate, just when her life seems to have hit rock bottom.

Golding has an endearing screen presence, which helps with all the holiday cheese going on here. The same goes for Michelle Yeoh (also Crazy Rich Asians) as the owner of the massive year-round Christmas shop where Kate works, dressed as an elf. Unfortunately, Yeoh’s own ample charms are more than neutralized by a romance with a customer, and the subplot there is so insanely cloying you might want to keep a barf bag handy.

The semi-romance between Kate and Tom is not far behind. Once the “big reveal” about him happens, try not to think too much about the many practical questions it brings up. I’m still unsure whether the audience is meant to think of him as real or as a figment of Kate’s imagination, because those questions get no easy answers either way.

I won’t lie, though—Last Christmas still got to me. It might stir your emotions a little bit too, if you love George Michael (whose songs make up most of the soundtrack), or you love Christmas, or Christmas movies, or all of the above. I’m not sure how much we need all this as early as an opening date of November 8—three weeks before Thanksgiving—unless the studio just wanted to get their junk out of the way early. Because just because I found myself getting involved in the story doesn’t make it something of high quality. There’s a reason why formula works.

There is one single scene, which indicates the better movie that could have been. Kate is home at her parents’ house, having a dinner with them and her sister (Lydia Leonard) to celebrate her sister’s promotion. There’s a round of dialogue that begins to crackle with energy, the kind that can make for a fun, unique story about a multi-ethnic, immigrant family. There are even brief bits about Brexit that are actually woven into what passes for a story in this movie pretty well. I actually laughed two or three times during this one scene, which was about even with the rest of the movie put together. I wish another movie could be grown out of this scene, one in which a Christmastime setting, even holiday sentiment, is still permitted, but just not laid on so thick.

But that’s what Last Christmas does: it lays it on thick with what doesn’t really work, and skims over what does. That’s also what makes it so easy to overlook the solid performance among all of the lead actors. They have the kind of rapport you’d like to explore further. Just in some other movie.

Overall: B-