The Perfect Cheesy Christmas Flick

Everyone has a soft spot for Christmas rom-coms, and the movie Last Christmas is no exception. With very lovable and familiar faces in the cast, a George Michael themed soundtrack and a predictable plot, this film has all of the ingredients for a perfect feel-good Christmas movie. Although all of the main points are there, something about the film seems to fall short on-screen. 

The film is about our protagonist Kate (Emilia Clarke), who works as a retail elf in a year-round Christmas store. She spends most of her spare time drinking at a bar, having random hook-ups, and ignoring her family’s calls. Kate has the true Scrooge spirit during the holiday season, which is a big contrast to her love interest, Tom (Henry Golding). Tom is an extremely optimistic guy, always encouraging Kate to start ‘looking up’ more in her life to see the bright side of things.  

Although he’s very encouraging of Kate to get better, he constantly disappears for days on end. When Tom goes on his disappearing act, Kate turns to her family, who have just as many problems as she does. Her parents constantly argue, her dad (Boris Isakovic) took up taxi driving in an attempt to get out of the house, her mom (co-writer Emma Thompson) suffocates people with her constant critiques, and her sister (Lydia Leonard), is a successful lawyer who is unhappy. 

The film has a lovable cast who holds a good hand of talent, but the film falls short due to the plot and delivery. The film’s big plot twist is very predictable, not leaving many viewers surprised at all. Mostly anybody could take a wild card guess and nail the ending of this movie. The twist doesn’t give the audience any sort of solid closure, the audience is left to question and wonder about what is going on.  

Unlike the warm and happy feeling Christmas movies usually, give off, Last Christmas just left viewers confused and slightly angry at the end. Because of this, the happy-go-lucky Christmas spirit ending seems forced, like the audience is being spoon-fed the last act. The movie also tries to bring attention to more serious topics such as homelessness, Brexit, immigration and homosexuality, which feel extremely out of place at some points.  

The issues are never talked about seriously, just sprinkled in at random moments in the film. There’s not a serious conversation around any of the topics, so they feel out of place compared to the rest of the movie. 

This doesn’t mean the entire movie was awful, it still had it’s laughable moments, mostly because of the jokes we hear from Kate’s Yugoslavic mother or her boss at the Christmas store (Michelle Yeok), who calls herself Santa. The endearing cast provides an element of lovability for the movie, making the audience hope for a great movie. Despite the cast and the laughable jokes, something about Last Christmas just falls flat. Although it’s not the best, it will fit in well with the Hallmark movie marathons.