Look, just tell me what I need to do in order to snag me a manic pixie dream boy like Henry Golding.* How messed up do I have to be to get a gorgeous freespirit to come wandering into my life to charm me and unsettle me in the best way and fix everything that’s wrong with me and set me on a better path for myself? And also the smooching. Cuz I think I’m pretty messed up already, thankyouverymuch, and I am ready for this.
(*In fact, this movie kinda does tell me what I have to do in order to snag me a manic pixie dream boy like Henry Golding, and… nope. Fuck you, Last Christmas, for giving me hope and then snatching it away by reinforcing that love and life are pain, that the glitz and sparkle of Christmas are but a momentary reprieve from it, and that everything is pretty much unrelentingly awful. Goddamn.)
Anyway, Last Christmas is a wholly ridiculous movie. Whatever you’re imagining might be going on here, double it, and then throw in, I dunno, the rom-com narrative equivalent of some giant clown shoes and a cream pie in the face. And I kind of don’t care. I’m so hungry to see women like Emilia Clarke’s (Solo: A Star Wars Story, Me Before You) Kate onscreen: she’s simply a fucking personal disaster, and I feel so seen in ways that don’t happen often. I mean, very few of the specifics of Kate’s fucked-up-ness apply to me, but her overall confusion and disillusionment and general despair are things I am very much simpatico with. And that is so rare when I go to The Movies.
Also Henry Golding (A Simple Favor, Crazy Rich Asians) is delicious and his Tom so kind and sweet and funny and adventurous and — unlike way too many rom-com heroes — not stalkery or even problematic at all. Astonishing how rare this is. (The level of how unproblematic he is could be construed as a scathing critique of modern manhood: Dudes, you too could be as perfect a specimen of masculinity as Tom, if only [spoiler redacted]…)
Here’s the best thing: I like Kate, even though she’s actually kind of horrible. She is mean to her mother (Emma Thompson [Men in Black: International, Late Night], also a coscreenwriter); her mom may be a bit overbearing, but she clearly means well. Kate is thoughtless and inconsiderate with friends who go out of their way to help her. She’s way too fucking old to be so juvenile. But I was rooting for her anyway; she’s not a bad person, she’s just had a bad year (feeling this). Clarke is deeply charming here; she’s a total 180 from her Game of Thrones white-savior mother-of-dragons last-minute psychopath. I’m not suggesting that it’s okay to be mean if you’re cute; I mean that I could see that she deserved to be better than she has been and to have the kind of life that would make her happy instead of miserable.
As Kate takes her journey from adorable dirtbag (shades of Eleanor Shellstrop and is this now a thing? if so, I approve) to reasonable approximation of an adult woman, there’s a lot of music by George Michael and Wham! here. Like, maybe too much. (I say this as a pretty major fan of the band and the man, child of the 80s as I am.) Like, maybe screenwriter-Thompson and her cowriter, Bryony Kimmings, took the lyrics of the Wham! song that lent the title to the movie a little too literally. It’s movie madness, I tell you. Whether the future decides that Last Christmas the movie is downright classic or simply too utterly bonkers to be accepted into the Christmas canon remains to be seen. I guess we can give everyone involved entertain-me brownie points for being willing to go so completely all-in on the “Last Christmas” stuff, but… *whew*
If there’s too much Wham!, there’s not enough Rob Delaney or Peter Serafinowicz (who appear, shockingly, in only one scene, what?). There’s a decent amount of the incredible Michelle Yeoh (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Morgan), as Kate’s boss at the year-round Christmas shop she elfs at in Covent Garden, so that’s good but also just give Michelle Yeoh her own rom-com, please. There’s also a decent balance to be found in the movie’s teeter-totter between “fantasy fairy-lit London” and “depressingly realistic London.” Leave it to an unsentimental American filmmaker — director Paul Feig (Ghostbusters, Spy), who coincidentally just might be one of those rare male filmmakers who gets women and doesn’t talk down to us — to get that right.
This movie left me completely flumoxxed and not mostly in a good way, so that feels very 2019, at least.
The characters sound interesting, but I might not be able to survive the music. Thanks to working in retail for several years, I hate both Christmas music and 80s music with every fiber of my being and “Last Christmas” is the absolute worst combination of those two things. Makes my ears bleed.
Also, a funny thought just occurred to me, but the only other “manic pixie dream boy” in existence that I can think of is Buddy the Elf, from “Elf”, which is also a Christmas movie…..
David Tennant and Matt Smith’s Doctors (Doctor Who) are absolutely manic pixie dream boys. :-) Also: Buddy the Elf is the furthest thing from sexy, unlike the Doctors and Henry Golding here.
If you don’t like Christmas music and 80s music, you must avoid this movie at all costs.
Even this? :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q
Oh, you just GOTTA stir the pot, don’t you?!
https://erinmckeown.bandcamp.com/album/f-ck-that-erin-mckeowns-anti-holiday-album-2011
Whaaat?
And here I always thought that was my job…
Oddly, I’m actually not a big fan of that song. I love Tim Minchin of course, but the song is long and meandering with mixed topics. Its like 3 songs in one. I totally appreciate the idea behind it and agree with what is said. Just not in song form.
I can barely tolerate much xmas music nowadays. A little TSO, even the religious ones, is about all I can listen to. Everything else makes me want to jam an ice pick in my ear canal.
Or this? :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJNiphUc3E
Or, if you prefer the other end of the musical spectrum, this?…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qZU5C4bg2g
Oh, I forgot the original manic pixie dream boy: Titanic‘s Jack Dawson.
…
Slight spoiler for Last Christmas, though if you don’t guess this pretty instantly while watching the film, you’re not paying attention:
He even has something in common with Henry Golding here!
There’s a moment in the film where Golding playfully poses with his hands making a gun shape, pretending to be a spy, and I COULD TOTALLY SEE HIM AS BOND. Part of me really wants him to be the next Bond. But another part of me thinks he may be too nice to pull off the part. :-)
I generally believe in adding diversity to the big franchises, like Doctor Who and Star Wars and Spider-Man and Ghostbusters. And I used to believe that about James Bond: Make Idris Elba 007. Make Angelina Jolie 007. Make Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Tracey Ullman share 007 duties as a lesbian couple. But now I’m starting to think that James Bond is such a terrible human being that we should get rid of the franchise altogether and make up brand-new spies who are actually worth spending time on, maybe even invent a whole spy organization with a very open-minded hiring policy
I mean, yes, but so was the Wicked Witch of the West before Gregory Maguire wrote Wicked. Reinterpretation and revision are always possible. But yeah, new spies and spy agencies are always welcome. :-)
Angelina Jolie has played 007. She even saved the world from WW III like 007 usually does.
Geez, how quickly they forget… :-)
If I were making the next Bond movie (and I really, really shouldn’t), it would be about all the candidates who are vying to be the next 007. The agents in training would include Jolie, Yeoh, Golding, and everyone else we’ve suggested, maybe Dafne Keen and Richard Ayoade. We could even throw in some more non-Brits: Auli’i Cravalho, Kate McKinnon. The candidates who aren’t picked might be in the running for 006 or Moneypenny or Q. The field would look kind of like the Democratic debates. And everyone would tease Golding about being too nice to get the job.
Eventually, it would turn out that the current James Bond has gone rogue, and all the trainees would have to team up to stop him. MI-6 would grant them each a license to kill him. But maybe the agents would discover that MI-6 has become a corrupt organization, and Bond is right to want to destroy it. The trainees could take over the agency and rebuild it as a completely different organization.
And that’s why I should never be hired to write James Bond.
I think the next Bond movie should be animated. And Bond should be a woman. And instead of a globetrotting spy she should be a globetrotting superthief, using her skills only for good. And she discovers that the organization she works for is corrupt, and makes it her mission to take it down. And she should be voiced by Gina Rodriguez.
Basically I’m saying I’d pay for a film-length version of Netflix’s Carmen Sandiego, which is really good. :-)
So you’d abandon James Bond in favor of a franchise with a less terrible central character. And I’d rewrite the main character to be slightly less awful. Interesting.
If there were a Bond film and a Carmen Sandiego film playing in the multiplex, I’d probably see Carmen Sandiego. Unless the Bond film featured your rewrites, in which case I’d go see that too. :-)
But how does the theme song compare to the original? (I bet I can Google that, but I want your opinion, as an expert on just about every relevant subject.)
Oh, I much prefer the old song, but both songs are an appropriate fit for the kinds of shows they’re attached to. The old song was upbeat, catchy, goofy, and stuffed full of clever geography rhymes, clearly written for an Educational Game Show for Kidz. (And it was co-written by David Yazbek, who has done lots of other great stuff, including the music for Broadway shows like The Band’s Visit. Also, Rockapella is awesome.)
The new song isn’t as memorable and doesn’t have any lyrics beyond the title phrase, but it’s a moody bit of spy-thriller soundtrack that fits the style and story of the new series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILTWNFH4F5g
Would watch. But it needs to be a TV series, not just a movie.
Nice thing you know, you’ll be suggesting that Michelle Yeoh has what it takes to make a great Bond girl. And we all know how unlikely that is. ;-)
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