Nope. Future me, do not watch this movie again, do yourself a favour. It has a big cast, so one may be tempted, as I was the first time, because after all at Christmas sometimes one likes to watch Christmas movies, but not this. Definitely not this. The characters are stereotypes, not very likable, you honestly want to shout at them. The only decent ones are the child Bo and Ruby.
First half of the movie is so slow and boring, merely introducing all the characters, never getting to the point. The voiceover narrating the story, and sometimes saying things like that the old guard didn’t intervene when the two teenagers were making a scene kissing at the mall because he remembered all his kisses at Christmas, so instead he went away smiling, was a nice idea, but it got lost in how boring it all was.
As I said, it takes forever before they all get together for the family dinner. Before that, we have to endure the long long introduction:
-Charlotte (Diane Keaton) wants to have a perfect Christmas dinner, before her husband Sam (John Goodman) leaves. They are breaking up because they’ve drifted apart over the years. They lost a baby, and then Charlotte cared so much about her children that she lost herself into it; now Sam wants time for them alone, and asks her to do the trip to Africa they always dreamed of, but she refuses. He thinks she doesn’t love him anymore.
-Hank (Ed Helms), their son, is divorced. His wife Angie (Alex Borstein) has left him with their three children: Charlie, Bo and pretty little Madison (Blake Baumgartner). He also lost his job as a photographer because replaced by a machine, and hasn’t find the courage to tell anyone but Bucky.
-Charlie (Timothée Chalamet) is an awkward teenager who took badly his parents separation and now can only think of a girl, Lauren (Molly Gordon) but the first time they kiss a bully comes and hits his face.
-Bo (Maxwell Simkins) is very sorry about it all, and would like to buy something nice for his brother, something that might help him be happy, and at the end we understand that he wrote a message to Lauren to have her come to meet Charlie at the hospital. It was the one Christmas present actually lovely, and sweet. Of course the scenes of the two teenagers kissing so awkwardly were too much, come on..
-Bucky (Alan Arkin) is Charlotte’s father. His wife died I don’t know how long ago. Now, he spends his days at a diner because he likes the waitress, young Ruby (Amanda Seyfried), and after being very rude to her when he learns that she left that job, that it’s her last day and then she’ll go to another city to start over, he apologizes and asks her to come to the family dinner with him.
-Ruby’s story is narrated in a nice way, because we follow it from her point of view (more or less, since she’s not the narrator) and we see what a crappy kind of Christmas she’s had in her childhood with her drunk mother, and how much she likes Bucky.
-Emma (Marisa Tomei) has always had a difficult relationship with her sister Charlotte, since the day when she was just a child when she thought that her sister was superior and became jealous. She steals a brooch and is caught by a policeman who plans to arrest her. During the drive, they talk and somehow she can make him open to her, and I honestly felt much more for him than for her ( Percy=Anthony Mackie).
-Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) is Charlotte’s daughter, and a comedy writer. She feels like a disappointment to the family and she has an affair with a married man. Arrived at the airport, she’s not eager to go home earlier than strictly necessary; she meets Joe (Jake Lacy) who is about to leave as a soldier, but his flight has been delayed and won’t be able to leave until the next day. They talk a lot, mimicking the “Before sunrise” movie, and at last she asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend for one day, to avoid seeing her mother disappointed face.
-Sam’s aunt Fishy (June Squibb) is an addition without a real purpose other than to keep asking Sam if he did that trip to Africa..
Basically I was fed up with them all before they even met for Christmas.
Finally they get together (Percy eventually let Emma go free because it’s Christmas and in movies that’s what happens) but nothing goes as smooth as Charlotte hoped. The dog (the narrator, what a switch, oh what a surprise.. :-/ ) keeps eating their food, Emma keeps drinking their wine, and Bucky’s head drops on the table, so they rush to the hospital.
Of course things will now eventually get all Christmas-y. Charlotte and Emma fight a lot in Bucky’s hospital room until they’re thrown out, and then Emma takes Percy’s advice and buys Charlotte the most expensive gift she can find (a shower stool at the hospital gift shop) and realizes that she has a family after all. Eleanor leaves her lover (Bucky’s doctor=Jon Tenney) and runs after Joe who of course didn’t leave at all because he likes her, and they kiss (and that is supposed to be a romantic scene, or a funny one after she bumped into everyone on her way? Considering she’s at a hospital, I didn’t find it either :-/ )
Charlotte finally admits how she feels and how she lost the girl she was before into the love for her children, and tells Sam she wants to leave with him, and they make peace but they won’t leave after all because Sam tells her that Hank lost his job…
Hank, who saw Ruby kiss his grandfather Bucky before he went in for tests, asks Ruby to dance with him when all the family is dancing at the hospital, having there their family dinner party… which was rather awkward: does it mean that he accepts her in the family at Bucky’s side, or that he is interested in her since he’s now divorced? Was Bucky ever in love with her or did he bring her along for his grandson? :-/
Of course Bucky doesn’t die, and walks there to see them eating and then dancing all together, without any sign that they even noticed his presence there…
Terrible, honestly. A lot of big names, actors I like (specially Keaton and Tomei) but in roles so boring that they are not able to save.
The only small things I’d save: Bo elbowing Charlie to make him understand he wrote the text so he wouldn’t blow it with Lauren; Sam’s sad face when he told Madison that Charlotte doesn’t love him anymore; Ruby’s character, so sad and sweet, and yet so badly treated in the script.
ITA - natale all’improvviso
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