Last Christmas
Ten Second Review: Definitely not good enough to be watched seriously and not consistently ridiculous enough to be watched for fun, Last Christmas sadly misses the mark.
Emma Thompson and Paul Feige teaming up to make a Christmas meet-cute featuring Emilia Clarke; slam dunk, right? Sadly Not.
Kate (Clarke) and her family (including her mother played by Thompson) were forced to escape Yugoslavia when she was a child. She had dreams of being a singer then and is still clinging to them while she works a retail job in a year round Christmas shop in Covent Garden. After a year of being very ill, Kate needs to recenter herself and Tom (Golding) seems the right person to help her do that. A little less cynical than Kate, Tom seems to be just what she needs, even if he does seem a little unreliable.
There will be brushes against spoilers but that’s mostly the trailer’s fault!
Where to start with Last Christmas? It really isn’t a film to review, it’s a film to be discussed. I believe in finding the good in every film and that isn’t difficult here. Every scene with Michelle Yeoh is great and she nails her character. The gibbon made us crease up. The film also really sells Christmas in London which did put me firmly into Christmas mode. There were some well written exchanges planted throughout the film but these couldn’t save some questionable writing elsewhere.
There is one thing I specifically want to talk about but honourable mentions go to the Brexit stuff, the messy Yugoslavia Croatia dates, the touching bit, Tom’s phone and the real backseat that George Michael’s music manages to take even though its a constant feature and they mention him as often as possible.
The thing I’d like to take specific aim at is the trailer. I understand that trailers serve several functions; announcing the film, giving the audience a taste of the story, getting people excited about the stars in it and so on. Juggling these is a difficult task and a specific art form, so much so that most films faction this task out to specific trailer houses. A bad trailer doesn’t mean a good film and vice versa. Pixar can’t seem to cut a trailer to save their lives (with Cars 3 as a notable exception)but this isn’t reflective of the quality of their films.
Trailers have been critiqued over the past decade for being small movies. You see the status quo, the conflict and more and more often you see the resolution. They then ask you to shell out more and more money for tickets to see films that are 2 hour versions of the abstract you’ve seen. Some people have used trailers to actively combat this, cutting in scenes that don’t feature in the final film to add a different tone to the trailer. A great example of this is Avengers: Infinity War. The trailer features Hulk running into battle but in the actual film Hulk never features and in the shot from the trailer Banner is in the Hulkbuster armour.
I know this is a roundabout way of getting there, but this was what I hoped from Last Christmas. The trailer seemed so intent in giving away the third act of the film, almost as though they wanted you to go back and watch the trailer after and go “ohhhh, of course!”, that I thought maybe it was a double bluff. Sadly, the trailer not so subtly tells you what the film’s conclusion will be (exactly the conclusion for the particularly eagle eyed and eared as was pointed out to me by a friend after I saw the film).
Yes, I fully understand that this film is just a bit of Christmas fun, but with the weight of the names involved I was hoping for more. Sadly, that might be my fault but I do believe Emma Thompson has a better Christmas film in her - in fact she does, it’s called Love Actually. It’s clearly a film that wanted to do some good and at the same time embed itself in a very specific time period, but I’d say it did it to a fault. It’s not quite bad enough to watch it for that reason but certainly not good enough to watch sincerely. I implore you to watch the trailer though, it’s a 3 minute way to watch a 104 minute film and a masterclass in nullifying any expectation or curiosity in an audience.
Having said that, I will take the time each year to watch Michelle Yeoh say “Did you come back for your Christmas gibbon?” which has quickly become our friend group’s new favourite reference.
