“Oh. What. Fun” makes the mistake of showing us clips of other, better Christmas movies right at the beginning, an unfortunate contrast for a film that is not destined to become a holiday rewatch.
Narrator and harried mother and grandmother Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) explains that her shelf of classic films (on VHS!), beloved by families as an annual tradition, are all about the dads on Christmas, overlooking the mothers. She shares a glimpse of “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” (famously a THANKSGIVING movie, by the way), pointing out that we spend the whole movie with Steve Martin, with his character’s wife onscreen for just 89 seconds. Also in the first few minutes, we see Claire shivering at a gas pump; we get it, her metaphorical tank is empty, and she doesn’t have a metaphorical coat to keep her warm. She sees a mom with a three quarreling kids in the back seat and walks over to tell the children to be nicer to their mother because some day she will be dead. “Scrooge is famously grumpy around the holidays, and I’m not entitled to one little outburst?” she asks us.
Grumpiness is at the beginning of Scrooge’s story, but it takes up most of Claire’s. After the gas pump scene, we go back a day to December 23, as Claire is getting ready for her family to arrive and watching her favorite television show, an Oprah-esque series hosted by Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria). Claire has been preparing for this year’s Christmas since January 1. She tells herself it is for her family but in her heart what she wants most is for them to appreciate her enough to nominate her for a Zazzy’s annual Holiday Moms competition. “It’s not that important to me,” Claire assures her husband, Nick (Denis Leary), then saying maybe she’d better text them about it one more time. And we once again think fondly of better Christmas films, dysfunctional family sub-genre, as we remember Denis Leary in “The Ref.”
The family arrives: oldest daughter Channing (Felicity Jones), a novelist married to Doug (Jason Schwartzman), with their two children and middle child Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz), a hairdresser who brings a new girlfriend every year. This one is introduced as DJ Sweatpants (Rafaella Karnaby). Then there is the only son, the baby of the family, Sammy (Dominic Sessa), who does not quite have a job and who has just been dumped by his girlfriend Mae-bell, (Maude Apatow).
Claire’s neighbor across the street is her frenemy, emphasis on enemy, Jeanne Wang-Wasserman (Joan Chen, excellent at being icier than the North Pole at midnight). She says things like “Blessings!” and “I see you took my advice and went sans inflatables this year.” Claire and Jeanne are in an intractable cage match war of passive aggression, so as soon as she leaves, Claire hisses to her family to get the inflatables and the pump.
We spend a little time for everyone to get on everyone else’s nerves just enough to allow us to end by resolving most but not all of the ancillary family conflicts. Here’s an original idea: Grandpa Nick cannot figure out how to put the kids’ dollhouse together! As for the main conflict, here’s an even more original idea: Claire got tickets for a live dance performance on Christmas Eve and, when the family is running late, they jump in separate cars, and no one remembers to bring Mom along. So, Claire jumps in the car and drives off, with no plan, but ends up driving from her home in Houston to the Zazzy show studio in California.
Hallmark movies do not aspire to innovation, witty dialogue, or creativity; they are close to interchangeable and perhaps best watched while doing other things. But people love them because they know what works. We have to root for the main characters, we have to care about the stakes, and all lessons learned, whether about trust, confidence, second chances, or the true meaning of Christmas, have to be lessons that the characters earn. While “Oh. What. Fun” has an excellent director, Michael Showalter, who also co-scripted, some nice music, and top performers, including Danielle Brooks as a delivery driver Claire meets on the road and the exquisitely lovely Havana Rose Liu, very appealing as Jeanne’s daughter, it keeps undermining our sympathy with off-kilter stakes and inert efforts at humor. A swerve near the end as women complain in very crude terms about how unappreciated they are (endorsed by Andy Cohen!) gives much too much credit to someone who has failed to recognize that her family doesn’t appreciate her because she does not listen or try to understand what they would actually find meaningful.
Fancy candles, shoplifting, getting high, and one-upping the neighbors, are not as funny as this movie thinks and the resolutions of the Taylor/DJ and Sammy/Mae-bell relationships are especially awkward. The last shot of Claire is telling. Maybe she’d be better off watching a few Hallmark movies to learn that what makes family time meaningful is sharing memories and making new ones with the people you love.
