Happiest Season (2020) We can well understand how much the LGBTQ+ community embraced this movie......
After all, it's the first major, studio-backed gay Christmas romcom.
If we applied leniency to this cruel, bizarre film, we could always use the weary phrase, "well, it's better than having no gay romcom at all" ........
But really, LGBTQ+ audiences deserved so much better than this mess.......a tone deaf, warped attempt to duplicate all the ancient tropes of the typical Christmas romcom centered around a wealthy, dysfunctional family reunion.
Writer director Clea Duvall exaggerates her cliched family members way past the point of making them quirky.......they're downright repulsive and before the movie's half over, you'll want to throttle all of them.
They're the horrid family of the spoiled, weak willed Harper (Mackenzie Davis) who convinces the love of her life Abby (Kristen Stewart) to come home with her for the holidays......
Except that Abby's forced to pretend she's merely Harper's hetero roommate, since Harper's lacks the spine to come out to her family.
What follows is a near unwatchable cringe-fest, with Abby subjected to endless humiliation and ugly belittling at the hands of this overpoweringly obnoxious clan (Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen, Alison Brie, Mary Holland)........which even throws in creepy fraternal twin children who behave like rejects from a remake of "The Shining".......
So it's no wonder that Abby gravitates toward the town doctor Riley (a fine, subdued Aubrey Plaza) another lesbian who'd been cruelly betrayed and cast away by the whimpering, simpering Harper.
We have to wonder at this point if director Duvall even understood that she portrayed Harper and her family as so clueless and cold, the audience naturally roots for Abby and Riley as a couple. They are of course the only two sympathetic characters in the film, if you don't count Dan Levy's performance as that very standard romcom trope, the gay best friend
Don't get your hopes up......the film strictly adheres to Holiday movie tradition......with a last minute finale of revelations and reconciliations......and sentiment so phony, you'll gag.
Since the bulk of the film depicts the family members as utterly rotten, this supposed touchy-feely, pseudo heartfelt climax comes off as unearned, undeserved and thoroughly false and unbelievable.
And as usual, the always overrated Kristen Stewart stays in her usual state of mope, further deadening the proceedings.
For any time of the year, no matter what your sexual orientation, this movie's a stone cold Zero star (0) downer.
BQ memo to whichever filmmaker is tasked with making a gay romcom for Christmas of 2021.......after "Happiest Season", you've got nowhere to go but up.
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