The Weird Experience of Watching ‘Last Christmas’

The trailer for Paul Feig’s Last Christmas has been shown before every almost every non-action movie over the last few months. Along with a poster plastered onto billboards, subway walls, and throughout big cities. The marketing materials show a romantic comedy, one with two lovable leads. Faces we’ve seen before and faces that the majority of us enjoy watching on-screen.

We assume that these two will fall in love, with Emilia Clarke playing the bad-person-turned-likable lead, and Henry Golding playing the good guy counterpart that contributes to her change of heart. But Last Christmas isn’t a romantic comedy. It’s not about falling in love with someone else, or finding a soulmate at Christmas time.

Outside of the setting of a year-around Christmas store that Kate (Clarke) works at, this movie isn’t even about Christmas. The holiday just happens to be going on at the same time as the movie. This film could actually have been set during anytime of the year.

All of Kate’s decisions point to her being a bad person. She shows flashes of kindness, but through the first half of the film, she continues to be selfish, rude, and careless to those that care about her. Out of nowhere, she meets Tom (Golding), a possibly perfect man that volunteers at homeless shelters, has a spotless apartment, doesn’t carry around a phone, and rides his bike everywhere.

Kate does not become likable until Tom flips her, giving her insights on how to live, even if he’s being a bit condescending and judgemental. He doesn’t condone her behavior and he shows it. Early on in the film, you clue into a possible outcome of this relationship, and the emotional nature, or ethereal nature in this case, of Tom as a man.

Because of this, the script’s big twist, written by Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings, doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It almost turns into an annoying setback, one that could and should have been addressed much earlier in the film. The twist even undermines parts of the couple’s relationship, especially the physical aspects.

Clarke gives an enjoyable and likable performance, and once her character catches up to her clear charm, you cannot help but smile. Golding does enough for you to like him, but enough for you to root for him. He disappears from the film for 20 minutes at a time, and his role is much more supporting than you initially think. It’s a film about Clarke, not Clarke and Golding, as the marketing materials suggested.

Feig’s film even has an odd Brexit subplot, peppered throughout the film as Kate and her family are immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. We get a glimpse into how these immigrants are feeling during trying times. But that should be a movie by itself, not a minor subplot in a Christmas film. Thompson plays Clarke’s mother, and her thick Eastern European accent feels forced and uncomfortable. Not a good film on either side of the coin for Thompson.

After all of this though, Last Christmas ends on a high note, a scene that forces you to leave the theater with a wide grin smacked onto your face. Clarke’s characters finds some sort of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-reformation. And it just happens to be Christmas.

Even with all of its difficulties and issues, the film finds a way to come around on you in the last 20 minutes. Once the twist is revealed and Golding’s Tom leaves for good, Clarke is allowed to shine and sing Christmas songs, something you’re waiting (and hoping) for throughout the film. It finally becomes a decent, if not enjoyable, film about accepting your life and moving forward.

Paul Feig’s Last Christmas won’t make it into the best Christmas movies canon, but it should be included in another group of holiday films. The ones that you turn on with a glass of wine in your hand, laughing with your friends with it playing in the background.