2019 Reviews – Last Christmas

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. No, I mean I gave you my heart. Literally. Actually. This year, to save you from tears… I’m going to charm you from beyond the grave until you turn your life around.

That’s either going to work for you, or it won’t 😊

Last Christmas is written by Emma Thompson and directed by Paul Feig; Kate (Emilia Clarke) is a flailing Londoner, whose life is a mess. She works in a novelty Christmas shop whilst hoping to sing in musicals. Kate bumps into Tom (Henry Golding) over and over again around the city. They go on dates where he forces her to ‘look up’, and eventually Kate is able to face the troubles holding her back and become a better person. Last Christmas is also set at Christmas, and contains a lot of George Michael songs for its soundtrack.

Last Christmas takes a long while to get going. It repeats itself a few times, when setting up that Kate is good at letting everyone down and that Kate’s mother is hard to bear. I just kept waiting for something to start, and thought, “of course, we are taking our time to get to know our character” but it was around the time were Kate and Tom are hanging out in the Christmas shop at night that I considered that what we were seeing could be the entire movie. We follow Kate around in her day-to-day life, where she goes to work, visits friend’s and sleeps in their spare rooms, talks and walks with Tom, and goes for the rare audition. I guess the movie meanders around with Kate just to show us how draining her current circumstances can be, so when her life starts taking on some small changes, we see how drastically her predicament improves. Some people might be fine plodding along with Kate, but I was expecting some more to happen.

I’m all for a George Michael-themed movie set around Christmas; it sounds like a hoot! I wish the soundtrack was exclusively George Michael though; that would have made the jam in my donut taste that little bit sweeter. There are a few Christmas songs and maybe one or two others that sneak in there as well. I was actually bopping along to ‘Freedom 90’ during the montage sequence though.

There’s a big reveal that happens around three-quarters into the movie; I’d heard whispers that the twist is very obvious to figure out if you’ve seen the trailer and have a nose for sniffing out these sorts of things. I’m not convinced; I think it’s fairly well hidden. I also think that the twisty twist doesn’t ultimately matter, as Kate’s catalyst for turning her life around happens before the reveal, and simply spending time with this random fella Tom, is enough for her to want to change. Kate’s change is enjoyable to watch – she goes from flopping at auditions and making the people around her miserable, to creating her own musical production and connecting people, whether it be the homeless she meets, or her mother and sister. Even though the first half of Last Christmas drags, the ending is warm and fuzzy.

Emma Thompson is a treasure; she plays Kate’s mother and I was laughing out loud at the jokes she was telling. “She is drinking, like the pirate”, is one of the funniest lines of the year, I don’t care what anyone says (and I saw her say it over and over again on TV spots for Last Christmas and I still laughed inside the movie). I quite liked Michelle Yeoh as Kate’s boss as well; not as iron-hearted as the mother-in-law she played in Crazy Rich Asians, and she makes a few funny remarks of her own. She has an awkwardly humbling romantic courtship with a man that frequents her oddly-inspired Christmas novelty shop.

Knowing now how Last Christmas finishes it’s hard not to compliment it as a sweet movie. It promotes a message of helping one another and togetherness around Christmas. I feel like Last Christmas meandered some, and it put me off for a while. I could see Last Christmas becoming one of those movie’s that is a must around the holidays, but it’s not an instant classic. It might age like fine wine and be on TV every year if it catches the right wave of sentimentality. Emilia Clarke is charming enough, and has a smile to fit the season to be jolly.

2.5