Review: Happiest Season

Man, this blog sure does exist, doesn’t it?

I apologize for the lengthy delay between content this month.  I actually had a lot more content planned for this month than I initially planned.  But then reality hit.

I suffered a work related injury to my right hand that required stitches on my fingers.  I closed a door on it by accident and I am still recovering from increased numbness in my index finger especially.  It has made typing out these posts even more difficult than I could have possibly imagined.  Someday soon I’ll get full feeling back and typing out these posts will become second nature to me again.  But for now, you guys will just have to bear with me as I attempt to get accustomed to my slightly altered normal when it comes to writing.  Thank you for your patience for those of you who are still following me.

So yeah, with all the negativity this year has brought onto us, I want to talk about something that this world badly needs now more than ever before.  Christmas.

To those of you who don’t know me, I love Christmas.  This is my favorite holiday just like it is many others.  And I know that a lot of my followers don’t actually know me in real life, but believe me when I say, when it comes to going out for Christmas, I go ALL OUT.  I overdecorate.  I wear basically a new Christmas sweater every day.  I tend to purchase too many gifts for my friends and family.  I love spreading holiday cheer.  That’s why I’m going to attempt to give this blog some specialty Christmas content.  Before my injury, I was planning some best/worst Christmas film lists and a ranking of Christmas songs.  I’m still planning on doing so and will try my hardest to follow through with some of this content or just save what I can’t follow through with for next holiday season.  Along with my traditional best/worst of 2020 lists.

So let’s start this holiday season off right by reviewing the latest Christmas movie sent straight to streaming due to the pandemic, "Happiest Season".  And I’m just going to get straight to it.  This is the best holiday movie I’ve seen in many and I do mean many years.  One that I hope becomes a new holiday classic.  For more than just how it handles its subject matter with the LGBT community.  But because how it does so smartly.  It doesn’t get heavy handed about its subject matter.  It normalizes it to the point that this could be just a standard romantic comedy played by anybody.  And I don’t mean that insultingly.  It’s because they make these characters out to be real people or at the very least reality adjacent.  I found myself reacting alongside these characters along the way due to such emotional investment.

If it isn’t obvious already, the acting in this is phenomenal.  Not a single actor or actress that I wouldn’t recommend.  Daniel Levy and Mary Holland constantly had me laughing throughout the entire movie.  Daniel Levy playing the comedic sidekick who had a recurring gag about tracking people….as well as asking about fish (slight spoiler but doesn’t tell the whole story for the joke to be fully effective).  Mary Holland being the youngest and most neglected of the three sisters.  Her faux happiness made me laugh a lot.  Aubrey Plaza playing against her usual comedic roles made me realize she has untapped depth in the drama genre.  Mackenzie Davis, who really shines in the third act more so than the rest of the movie, as we get to better understand why she was hiding her identity secret and being the way she was through 70% of the movie.  

But the best actress of the entire film is Kristen Stewart.  If you asked me ten years ago that Kristen Stewart would become one of my favorite actors/actresses working today, I would have laughed that off just like we all would have with the Twilight fad.  Which I’m so glad her and Robert Pattinson are thriving after being a laughingstock.  Both are in my personal top ten to twenty favorite actors/actresses working today.  And this is a tour de force for why people need to stop sleeping on Kristen Stewart.  She kills this role and makes it one of my personal favorite performances she has ever done.  They made the right choice by making her most of the focus of this relationship because she is the one who puts the humanity in it.

As for the director, Clea DuVall.  Who I recognized immediately from 1998 teenage sci-fi horror film The Faculty.  This woman is a director on the rise after this movie.  Like I mentioned earlier, she handles this movie so perfectly.  Because if you removed the light-hearted and feel good vibes this movie does give off, it’s actually a very depressing movie.  I’m not going to go into too much more spoilers but there are seriously depressing topics in this movie about acceptance, coming out, death, mental/emotional manipulation just to name a few of the hard topics that come into play.  It takes real talent to make a holiday rom-com that genuinely makes the audience feel good after sitting through and DuVall nails it.  It reminds a lot of another great recent LGBT movie Love, Simon.  And just like Love, Simon; I also love this movie.

There are so many elements that make me forgiving of my only complaint and that is the usual rom-com tropes are here.  Expensive things break when people want them handled with care.  There is a predictable climatic catfight amongst the family (slightly funnier than normal due to the comedy working mind you).  Also some predictable message moments like Kristen Stewart being told to come out of the closet by the mother.  But you know what?  Just because there are rehashed tropes and predictable messages doesn’t make a movie bad.  It’s a matter of how they are handled and here they are all handled well.

This is just a feel good movie in a year where we all could afford to feel good because the world around us is shit.  And this put a smile on my face when I badly needed it.

 

Final Grade: A+

 

Stream it on Hulu now.  We all could use some serotonin right now and this movie provides it in spades.

 

Thanks everybody for reading.  Next up are some more holiday treats as well as the beginning of the 2020 list season once Billboard publishes their 2020 year end list for music.  As well as me posting some shorter film reviews for some of the films I sat through this year that I didn’t really have enough content full length film review content for.  It truly is tough to write film reviews for films that don’t give me enough material to work with at times.

Until next time, stay safe out there.  Please.