Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the \u2026 oh no, not again! In the era of generic Netflix branded Christmas slop (see A Very Jonas Christmas Movie, A Christmas Prince and Holidate) this one was supposed to be different. It\u2019s a Christmas comedy with a starry line-up that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Felicity Jones and Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz, and it\u2019s directed by Michael Showalter, who made the Oscar-winning The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Indeed the movie opens with an audacious dismissal of the entire Christmas genre, including a spiky feminist takedown of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Here Pfeiffer\u2019s disgruntled Texan mom Claire Clauster announces, \u201cSteve Martin\u2019s some kind of hero because he spends a few days trying to get home? And what does his wife get? Around 89 seconds of screen time!\u201d<\/p>\n
The film, alas, peaks there as it soon morphs into a thinly veiled \u201cdysfunctional family holiday\u201d retread (think The Family Stone or Christmas with the Kranks) melded awkwardly with Home Alone. Yes, on a long-awaited festive day trip that features the extended Clauster clan, including punctilious daughter Channing (Jones) and needy son-in-law Doug (Jason Schwartzman), a terrible and highly unlikely blunder occurs. Matriarch Claire is accidentally left behind. And so, furious at the personal slight, she embarks on a lurching, law-breaking road trip to Hollywood while her remaining kin must work out their differences and recognise that loyal, obedient and hard-working moms everywhere need lots of help at Christmas time.<\/p>\n
Like a desultory smattering of Christmas sleet, however, nothing here sticks. The characterisations are half-hearted, a charmless subplot concerning a family of \u201cperfect\u201d Asian-Americans is wearily dated, while the quirky soundtrack brass that blares throughout is tasked with far too much heavy lifting. You know that your comedy is in crisis when you\u2019ve substituted actual jokes for the grating rhythms of an oompah band. Still, Pfeiffer remains charismatic till the end. She deserved better.
\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606\u2606
12, 108min
Prime<\/p>\n
Two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman<\/p>\n
Make Wednesday your go-to cinema day. Each month Times+ members can bring a friend for free at Everyman on a Wednesday. The perfect cinema experience with plush sofas, a full bar and great food. Visit mytimesplus.co.uk<\/a> to find out more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the \u2026 oh no, not again! In the era of generic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-322300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}