So, I had no idea what I was getting into with Last Christmas. I vaguely remember seeing some of the YouTube critics I follow covering it, but I figured it to be some throw-away holiday flick like This Christmas (maybe this new one is a prequel?) or Four Christmases or some shit like that. Considering I’ve been subjecting myself to even worse examples of this tripe, what could this one bring, right? Oh, that poor, sweet summer child that was me from a couple weeks ago…
Right off the bat, certain things catch my eye, as the neon-styled opening titles relate the fact that Emma Thompson’s script for this thing was inspired by the same-titled song from George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, the one that’s nigh-on inescapable around this time of year. (At least it’s not “Wonderful Christmas Time”, amiright?) ‘Kay. We’re then introduced to Katarina (oops, I mean Kate), our slightly self-centered and vaguely bad-at-adulting protagonist, as she works at a X-Mas shop. She’s finished recovering from a sickness that required a heart transplant, and since then she’s become relatively estranged from her Yugoslavian family and can’t quite get her shit fully together. Luckily for her, she meets Tom, a wildly optimistic and mildly quirky, always bidding her to look up at something charming above and finding his way into her good graces. Just as things are looking up for her, though, Tom is nowhere to be found, but his influence has already taken root in her, helping her mend things with her family and do good things in the world around her. Then shit goes stupidly sideways, but those spoilers are gonna haveta wait a moment.
As treacly and ludicrous as it is, I was shocked to see Thompson was responsible for this script. Her Oscar was well-deserved for Sense and Sensibility, but this feels like something tossed together for a quick holiday buck. Emilia Clarke tries to do something with an inherently inane character, but she’s once again the victim of mishandled ideas (see as Me Before You and the way Game of Thrones wound up dealing with her character’s arc). The rest of the acting is fine, though Thompson pushes it with her forced Slavic accent, and Michelle Yeoh is absolutely wasted as Kate’s boss. The film is structurally fine, but it suffers from the downright twee nature of its plot and a distinct lack of identity. Paul Feig is playing it extremely safe here, but I’m just glad the characters weren’t just screaming at me like they usually are in his films. Still, this thing is only moderately better than his previous holiday outing, Unaccompanied Minors, and you should never be only moderately better than that horrendousness.
But we all know the biggest problem lies in the story itself, so here are some massive spoilers, kids: So, remember how Kate had some serious condition a year ago? That led to a heart transplant? Yeah, so, as it turns out, Tom was the donor. He was killed in an accident, and they transplanted his heart into Kate. His appearance in the film is strictly ghostly, apparently, guiding Kate toward a lighter future. So, quite literally, last X-Mas Tom gave Kate his heart. Now, that seems to be where the literal lyrical illustration breaks down, ’cause the heart is never given away nor technically given to a third special party, but that one line is squeezed for all it’s worth. And do I even need to explain why that shit is some of the dumbest screenwriting around!? It might have been one thing if everything was metaphorical or something, but it’s all taken quite literally. I had no idea how to react at first, all I could do was silently plead with my immediate surroundings, not wholly unlike how I did at the end of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (he ran into the field of fire and death and LIVED!?!?!?).
This is some major garbage here, and I feel sorry for pretty much everyone involved, especially Emilia Clarke. I’m normally an Emma Thompson supporter, but this was just horrific. Skip it, kids, unless the Hallmark or Ion films are proving too formulaic for you.
Allusions of Grandeur 