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Michelle Pfeiffer performs a mother on the sting at Christmas time within the new film “Oh. What. Fun.” If the sarcastic punctuation wasn’t sufficient of a tip off, Pfeiffer’s character Claire is just not having the perfect time.
Claire’s grown youngsters (Felicity Jones, Chloë Grace Moretz, Dominic Sessa ) don’t admire her efforts. Her husband (Denis Leary) is supportive with out being useful. And she is working as a one lady present, managing this valuable time together with her household and making an attempt to maintain all of it cozy and pleased and enjoyable via fixed, thankless labor (cooking, cleansing, wrapping, planning). She even appears to be like fabulous on her many, many (too many?) rubbish runs. But after one significantly merciless oversight from her household, she takes off from her suburban jail and doesn’t inform anybody. For as soon as, she’s determined to go do one thing for herself.
Promising although it could appear, “Oh. What. Fun” is a film that does little or no with its setup and terrific solid (together with the likes of Danielle Brooks, Joan Chen, Maude Apatow, Rose Abdoo and Eva Longoria in virtually cameo-sized roles) opting as a substitute for probably the most generic model of itself.
The film, streaming Wednesday on Prime Video, begins with a type of “low point” (for a ravishing, well-off, stay-at-home Texas mother, that’s) during which she tells some youngsters in a neighboring automobile at a gasoline station to be nicer to their exhausted mom within the entrance seat. “She’ll be dead someday,” she says calmly and significantly. She needs the mom a Merry Christmas, provides the children a piercing look after which we get the dreaded freeze-frame/file scratch and a voiceover about being entitled to somewhat outburst across the holidays and a half-hearted rant about what number of vacation motion pictures are about males. Already this film is making this poor lady apologize.
“They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays: Moms,” Claire says. Sure, yes, preach Claire, even if her exclusions are suspect and her examples need further review. I’m pretty sure “Home Alone” was at least a little bit about the mom, and that “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” doesn’t deserve the vitriol. Alas, noble intentions aside, “Oh. What. Fun.” probably wasn’t what she had in mind.
Director Michael Showalter co-wrote the script with the short story’s author, Chandler Baker and is committed to keeping the proceedings light and breezy (no cancer diagnoses here). But the effect is a movie that seems almost embarrassed to commit to its own silly premise, rushing through everything instead of letting us enjoy this cast. Everyone gets assigned one tidy problem or flaw and no one has any sort of lived-in familial chemistry with one another.
Channing (Jones) is the oldest and is married to Doug (Jason Schwartzman) who really wants her younger sister Taylor (Moretz) to think he’s cool although Taylor, a serial monogamist who always brings a new woman home for the holidays, is just mean to him. Sessa is the youngest: Underemployed and recently dumped. There are two grandchildren too, Channing and Doug’s twins, but they’re nonentities.
Claire wants one thing for Christmas: For her family to have submitted her to a contest to meet her favorite daytime talk show host, Zazzy Tims (Longoria). Of course no one got the hint. But her breaking point really comes when she realizes everyone has gone to an event that she planned without her. No one noticed she wasn’t in one of the cars. And so instead of driving herself to meet them, she decides to drive to Burbank and crash the Zazzy Tims show instead.
Showalter attempts to turn this road trip into a kind of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” journey, even having her share a dingy motel room with Brooks, playing a suspiciously contented delivery driver (a little on the nose for an Amazon movie). But it barely commits to the bit and they soon go their separate ways instead of embarking on a buddy trip.
There must be a kind of director’s jail for such restrained use of a performer like Schwartzman (as Claire’s son-in-law), or using Chen as a one-joke “perfect” neighbor with her all-white and silver Christmas decorations.
In its own way, “Oh. What. Fun.” has also accidentally tapped into the cinematic zeitgeist. This is a year in which on screen mothers aren’t just on the edge – they’re in complete and total freefall. Jennifer Lawrence’s feral barking in “Die My Love,” Rose Byrne’s waking nightmare in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Jessie Buckley’s primal agony in “Hamnet.” Even Teyana Taylor’s postpartum apathy in “One Battle After Another” may match.
Lighter variations are welcome too – there’s nothing like comedic launch. But if the concept was to make one thing for the mothers, “Oh. What. Fun.” is about as considerate as a unexpectedly scribbled card on a bit of printer paper the morning of her birthday. We can all do higher.
“Oh. What. Fun.” An Amazon MGM Studios launch streaming Dec. 3 is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 106 minutes. Two stars out of 4.
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