Last Christmas
Kate is a young woman subscribed to bad decisions. Working as an elf in a year round Christmas store is not good for the wannabe singer. However, she meets Tom there. Her life takes a new turn. For Kate, it seems too good to be true.
Cast
Emilia Clarke – Katarina / Kate
Henry Golding – Tom
Michelle Yeoh – “Santa”
Emma Thompson – Petra
Lydia Leonard – Marta
Heartbreaker
“..last Christmas,
I gave you my heart,
but the very next day,
you gave it away..”
Picture a huge lipsticked mouth and bright white teeth, pausing between the lines of this famous song occasionally to grin pretentiously at the audience she’s singing it to. And then imagine how cringeworthy it feels to be sat watching Last Christmas starring Emilia Clarke. Building up to this though was possibly one of THE WORST Christmas movies I have ever sat and watched. And throughout it I felt as bemused as Clarke’s character frequently looked.
It consists of a number of scenes thrown together with an obvious intent to make you laugh, but the script and the antics Kate gets caught up in are simply not worth any ticket payer’s time. Seriously, if anyone out there is offered a chance to watch this film at a price – DON’T. Do not part with more than 20 pence.
This wasn’t directed by Paul Feig. It can’t have been, surely. That man has been responsible for some genuinely laugh-out-loud comedies (Spy for one). I refuse to believe he got involved with Last Christmas for any more than a few hours before someone else took over.
Picture a cozy festive shop, bursting with Christmas merchandise. Then imagine the manager of the shop (Santa) having a very uninteresting conversation with her employee about her non-existant love life, which is more of a miserable moaning than humourous dialogue. The employee (Clarke) shoots a few one-liner’s that warrant a perfect comeback.. but the opportunity is missed as the manager continues to bang on and on in a voice so addled you need to listen intently. Seriously, it’s as though the woman is trying to speak through a throat full of yoghurt.
Scenes like this continue throughout the film, but hit a peak of tediousness when a random male stranger enters the Christmas shop. Ed played by Maxim Baldry enters the picture to woo Kate’s manager. And he is weird – not even in a good way. I couldn’t tell if the man was just a shit actor, or if the character was meant to be extremely plain with a personality similar to Professor Snape from the Harry Potter films. It was clear that his introduction was meant to be mysterious but like every other part of this film, it missed the mark.
This entire thing was beyond irritating. Its long, very unfunny scenes and additional characters who made very little impact felt like someone had produced a spoof of Christmas films – not A Christmas film. I think what makes it worse is Emma Thompson’s recent gloating about how she has chucked this thing out into the world; she’s like a person from a gas & electric firm stood heckling you from a stand in the street (everything about it is painfully annoying, but they couldn’t be more proud of what they’re doing). It really isn’t all that, Emma. And dropping references to Brexit / immigration issues was clearly your own political swipe at the current state of Britain. Pipe down.
“..oh my god, did I tell you I saw Last Christmas?” asked a work colleague recently. As I turned to answer her she laughed, “it was fucking awful!”. Her next comment was, “why did Emma Thompson have a foreign accent?”. I knew exactly what she meant. Thompson had a foreign accent because she was acting – but it was the overall irritating aspect of it. Her enthusiasm at portraying an Eastern European mother which had an underlying political message for viewers was tiresome and highly unoriginal.
If you can’t guess the entire plot of this film from its trailer I would be very surprised (Katarina being wheeled into a hospital operating room, the song lyrics “last Christmas, I gave you my heart..”, the appearance of a random man who only seems to interact with the lead female character and nobody else, words of wisdom being offered by this man, etc.). Not only does the trailer practically spell out who’s who and what happens to them, but it’s painfully obvious during just the first half hour of the film what the score is.
There may be messages here, but overall Last Christmas shits all over the festive season with shabby directing, absence of humour and a recycled theme you’ve probably seen before. To top it off, it tries to state that Christmas is the only time of year when you can make changes, when it’s really not.
Absolutely dire.
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