Film Review - Last Christmas

I was not planning on making this a priority, but here we are. And, make no mistake, if there was anything else on, I probably would have preferred it over Last Christmas, an inoffensive, but certainly bland romantic comedy that goes for the shallowest framework targeting the shallowest thinking audiences, and still manages to feel forced, rigid, and clumsy at every turn. 

And the worst thing about it is there was a seed of an idea that had the potential to work. Exploring themes of depression, homelessness, the breaking down of relationships with a sprinkling of societal and political commentary in there should work for me, at least on the surface. And, if I’m going to give the film any credit at all, there is something to the film’s brief exploration of these topics and the shame that one might feel in asking for help, fearing that they might be seen as self-obsessed or pretentious (as the protagonist is), when, in reality, their world seems to be breaking apart at the seams. 

That’s where my praise of this film must come to an abrupt end however, because while the film puts in the effort, it certainly does not yield results. The film seems to want us to engage with the politics and racism that lead to Brexit, but when it’s all just setup for a predictable punchline that got the cheapest of laughs out of me, why should I even care? 

That’s another problem: the film seems to have no grasp on tonal consistency. The start of the film is plagued with stilted humour that borders on the cringeworthy, and while this is the case throughout, by the end of the film, it demands to be taken seriously and celebrated as this grand romantic triumph when the guy was just a bizarre figment of her imagination all the time. 

Furthermore, without a single shot or moment in the editing that I remember really being impressed by, it all goes to emphasise how formulaic it all really is. 

The film is marginally charming, I’ll more than give it that, but that charming veneer is compromised thanks to how, as I’ve said before, stilted it all feels. Certainly not offensively bad, but who this is for or why anyone would ever want to watch this more than once is beyond me.

4 / 10