Then again, perhaps thoughtless people constantly reminding Abby about her parents’ death and inappropriately calling the orphan “needy” can’t ever be funny no matter how you spin it.Ībby’s time with Harper’s family recalls a “Meet the Parents” and “ The Family Stone” hybrid of sorts, though without the genuine humor of the former and the darkly sophisticated wit of the latter. In the meantime, none of DuVall and Holland’s attempts at comedy land. But a manic and gauche atmosphere takes over at once, thanks to Harper’s image-crazy mother Tipper ( Mary Steenburgen), politician father Ted ( Victor Garber)-we never get to learn anything about his politics other than the fact that he’s running for mayor-and two nightmarish sisters: the exceedingly hostile, unhappily married Sloane ( Alison Brie) and the caricaturized dutiful daughter Jane (Holland). If only I could tell you that Harper’s family at least makes it a bit easy for Abby to peacefully play along for a few days. When Harper finally admits the truth to Abby on the way, the young woman protests, but then eventually weighs and accepts the situation with an unusual amount of grace, keeping her pain at bay, understanding that the woman she is in love with isn’t ready to publicly own up to their relationship. But little does she know that Harper isn’t out to her family yet-they think she’s bringing home her orphaned straight roommate who has nowhere else to go for Christmas. Abby accepts, with a diamond ring at the ready to pop the question to Harper over at her parents’ house. One drunken night while they wait for the holiday break to commence, Harper gears up the courage to invite Abby to her family’s home for Christmas, her girlfriend’s general resistance to the festivities be damned. But those grounds alone aren’t enough to justify the overall clumsiness of “Happiest Season” when most of it looks unimaginatively lit and designed like a cookie-cutter holiday showroom, with scenes written in the tone of SNL sketches: absurd though not cleverly so, awkwardly humorless and curiously lifeless.Īnd yet all the staple shiny and cozy trimmings of the season-handsome decorations, crackling fires, twinkly lights and plenty of red and gold-still pleasantly deck the movie in which the mellow Abby and the boisterous Harper live happily together in their cozy apartment. By the same token, it’s disheartening that heterosexuality is still the default mode of this fare in a frequency that makes films like DuVall’s seem like small miracles. To some degree, it’s impossible to not feel impressed by the audacity of DuVall, an openly gay woman herself, in wanting to tell an inclusive version of a Christmas story we’ve seen a million times before. Toppling a stereotypically straight and white genre does not make it beside the point whether an ensemble resembles people with recognizable human behavior. It’s almost as if the filmmaker thought that her movie-a mainstream, star-studded, studio holiday romp built around a gay couple-is virtuous and worthy enough in itself just by existing. Co-written by DuVall and her “Veep” co-star Mary Holland, “Happiest Season” puzzlingly doesn’t feature any of the incisiveness DuVall formerly came to prove as a storyteller. Unfortunately, this self-aware attitude plagues much of “Happiest Season,” actor-turned-director Clea DuVall’s second narrative feature after 2016’s modest yet sharp relationship comedy “ The Intervention,” a film that introduced the writer-director’s perceptive voice both on the page and behind the camera.
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