The Paul Feig-directed, Emma Thompson-penned Last Christmas<\/em><\/strong> fits that candy-cane-colored niche pretty nicely. It\u2019s fairly silly and predictable, and eagle-eyed viewers can accurately guess the plot twist just by watching the trailers. However, this Christmas-themed rom-com also contains a legitimately touching message of goodwill and self betterment that, along with its snappy dialogue and a fun performance by star Emilia Clarke, puts it a cut above most of its basic cable and streaming relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twenty-six-year-old Kate (Clarke) divides her time between singing auditions, one-night stands and a job in a Christmas decor shop. Since an undisclosed major illness a year ago, she\u2019s had a strained relationship with her Yugoslavian immigrant family, particularly her overbearing mother (Thompson). Rather than live at home with them, Kate couch hops, bringing carelessness and destruction to a series of friends\u2019 flats, wearing out their patience with each new disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks before Christmas, Kate runs into Tom (Henry Golding) outside her store. Tom\u2019s an attractive and endlessly positive young man, and selfless, too \u2014 he spends nights volunteering at a local homeless shelter. Despite Kate\u2019s bleak worldview and endless sarcasm, Tom sticks around, and Kate falls for him. Over the course of their relationship, he gets Kate to start making healthier life choices and consider others\u2019 needs and feelings. For reasons that kind of make sense but mostly feel contrived, it all happens against a backdrop of George Michael songs (Last Christmas<\/em> isn\u2019t a jukebox musical, but it wouldn\u2019t require much work to make it one).<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a lot of elements in Last Christmas<\/em> that don\u2019t quite make it together into a cohesive whole. For instance, there\u2019s an underbaked subplot involving Brexit anxiety that you can feel Thompson and co-writer Bryony Kimmings straining to make prominent, but this movie just doesn\u2019t feel like the place to do so. There\u2019s the mystery of Tom, who\u2019s never around consistently, and is suspiciously hard to reach. There\u2019s also drama between Kate and her friends, drama about Kate\u2019s immigrant background, and<\/em> drama related to Kate\u2019s unresolved trauma regarding her illness. That\u2019s a lot to pack into a film under two hours. As a result, Last Christmas<\/em> often feels unfocused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite all this, the transformation that Kate\u2019s relationship with Tom kicks off is honestly moving, which is due almost entirely to Clarke\u2019s performance. She somehow manages to really sell Kate as a struggling soul in need of unconditional love, and once she gets it, she\u2019s able to turn around and love herself and others. Many lesser Christmas romance movies would make that selfless transformation all in the service of getting the guy, but Last Christmas<\/em>, thankfully, doesn\u2019t do that. Instead, it sends the message that doing good is worth it just for the sake of becoming a better person and making the world a little nicer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last Christmas<\/em> isn\u2019t really aspiring to be much more than a fizzy good holiday time, and that much it achieves. But it\u2019s also trying to be something a little more, so much so that the movie overstuffs itself on plot to the point that it breaks the limiting framework it\u2019s trying to work within. However, that effort still deserves a little appreciation. It\u2019s nice to see a goofy holiday romance that advocates for actual selflessness, showing the good it can do for us as well as those we help. Even if the rest of the movie is something of a mess, that\u2019s an honorable sentiment. C+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all Christmas movies need to be great art. The Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and even Netflix have proven that for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":12838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/577"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n1 hr., 42 min.; rated PG-13 for language and sexual content. <\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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