Whenever you spot Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh together in a film you can’t help not think of Crazy Rich Asians. That hangover looms for a bit over Last Christmas as well but by and by the season’s spirit takes over, as it is very consciously meant to. The Paul Feig outing, for which Emma Thompson shares credits for story and screenplay, has got very little by way of surprise and everything you’d expect in a conventional holiday film.
The ahead of the season Christmas offering comes with a familiar but entirely forgettable feel-good message, that however broken you might be, you will mend in the end. That hope and healing is all. So Kate (Emilia Clarke), who can’t seem to get anything right in life, becomes a bumbling elf of a saleswoman in Santa’s (Yeoh) Covent Garden store during Christmas. A chance meeting there with the personable young Tom (Golding) helps her find her personal salvation and get a grip on herself.
Then there’s Kate’s larger Yugoslav refugee family in London, with mom Emma Thompson putting on a very obvious, practised, thick accent. Here noone gets along with anyone. Anxiety, anger, depression, panic attacks, fights and arguments are all. It’s about these damaged souls, their lost dreams and dented relationships that eventually do get repaired.
- Director: Paul Feig
- Starring: Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Emma Thompson
- Run time: 102 minutes
- Storyline: Kate, who can’t seem to get anything right in life, becomes a bumbling elf of a saleswoman in Santa’s store during Christmas. A chance meeting there with the personable young Tom helps her find her salvation and get a grip on herself
A parallel, autumnal romance plays along with that of Kate, involving Santa (Yeoh). It gives the film it’s one and only one original, genuinely funny moment when Kate describes Santa’s brief romantic interlude in the store as a Scandinavian short film. Then, in tune with the title, there is George Michael bringing along the requisite dose of nostalgia with all these stories playing along his popular, and some unheard, songs that appear to have been randomly and meaninglessly strung together as the background score. Why Wham and Michael when it could have been anybody else?
Despite the likeable leads’ repartee — the charm of Golding and warm, open smile of Clarke — the film just refuses to sparkle. There is barely any chemistry and fire between the two. It gets too cheesy and saccharine sweet for comfort, at least for my own consumption. Specially when it comes to some manipulated moments and seemingly profound but decidedly shallow talk of how being special is overrated and being human is very hard. And dialogue which reads like Shekhar Kapur’s faux philosophical tweets of yore: how one must be good to oneself because noone else has the power to make us happy. Alright!
There’s a deliberate attempt to bring in immigrant politics, Brexit, the poor and the homeless into the picture but things can’t rise above the facile and the film feels deliberately “woke”, for the heck of it. Worst is the lead up to the climax. The narrative device used is embarrassingly juvenile, in the same league as a blind Nirupa Roy in Amar Akbar Anthony suddenly finding her vision all over again thanks to Sai Baba. At least Manmohan Desai could pull off the silly to some sublime effect with sheer chutzpah.
With Feig, the quick, magical resolution gets plain bland and boring and eminently laughable. As does the entire film. No wonder Last Christmas hasn’t stayed on with me even for a day after having watched it, what to say of December 25 that is still more than a month away.
