Sooner or later, someone was going to make a gay Christmas movie. The year 2020 gives us Happiest Season, which had the good fortune to wrap up shooting just before the pandemic hit North America.
A young woman, Abby (Kristen Stewart) has been invited to spend Christmas with her girlfriend, Harper (Mackenzie Davis)'s family. She hopes to propose over the holiday season. While they're gone, the apartment and their various pets have been left to her wisecracking best friend, John (Dan Levy-- Eugene's kid). The chemistry between Stewart and Levy, in particular, shines. I believed in their friendship. Even their ideologically-laden arguments over same-sex marriage have charm. She embraces the concept; he thinks it's selling out to heternormative standards.
Halfway to the old home town, Harper reveals the truth. Her conservative relatives don't know she's a lesbian, much less that she's in a relationship. And, given that her father's running for office in what, we must acknowledge, is a rather conservative country, she's hoping Abby will keep mum not only about the relationship, but about her own sexual orientation. Apparently, social media plays no role in their lives.
Hilarity, to some degree, ensues. The family is crazy, of course. Not as crazy as, say, the family in The House of Yes (the dark benchmark for stories about bringing one's flame home to meet one's deranged family during the holidays), but difficult and, despite polished public personae, horribly dysfunctional. Her socially awkward younger sister (Mary Holland) discusses her fantasy-novel-in-progress at the most inopportune times. Her older sister (Alison Brie) is a tightly-wound bundle of perfectionism, and something most definitely is up with her husband (Burl Mosley). Their little children are quietly borderline demonic. Harper's parents (Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber), meanwhile, keep trying to set her up with her ex-boyfriend, while treating Abby like some charity case "orphan" (her parents died when she was younger).
Davis plays her part a little too well. Harper's not entirely likeable as a character, and I really did not entirely like her. Granted, stories don't have to be about likeable people. Granted, we have to have complications in what is, essentially, a holiday Rom-Com. The genre, however, rather requires that we root for the principals. A short way into the movie I really wanted Abby to run off with someone else. And the film offers a someone else: Harper's wronged ex, Riley, played by the excellent Aubrey Plaza. The truth of her past with Harper, and how their relationship ended, could (and possibly should) end any plans of Abby proposing, at least for the present.
Look, this isn't a bad movie. Actually, by the standards of the twelve thousand or so Holiday/Christmas movies now dropped annually, the Hallmark stuff, it's pretty good. Production values are strong. The cast is uniformly excellent. The script has the requisite number of comic scenes, and they work. It has uncomfortable drama, and discusses some serious issues. And relationships are tough; depicting them as problem and baggage-free would be a lie. But I didn't entirely buy the ending and everything required to bring about that ending. I kept thinking the movie may have had some other, more challenging finale in mind, and the film-makers weren't willing to commit to it.
More than anything, I think, I just wanted more of Abby, John, and Riley hanging out.
Director: Clea DuVall
Writers: Clea DuVall, Mary Holland.