Happiest Season

I was surprised by how much I liked this Hulu Christmas offering, since you can get jaded at the number of holiday romantic movies the various sources crank out every year. The movie seems to combine several sub genres here, the familiar gay coming out, dysfunctional holiday family, even bordering in romantic triangle territory. Martin Levy’s son does him proud, as Dan Levy was a real scene stealer here. I quickly decided the more of him, the better. The chemistry between the two leads wasn’t quite evident to me and I am not sure why. I saw more chemistry between Harper and Abby’s ex-girlfriend Riley, actually. Also, I think an opportunity was lost in the perpetually frowning two kids. They should have been allowed a bit more personality I think. (And what is up with all the gender neutral names for many of the female characters here? Harper, Tipper, Sloan, Riley, Harry, Kelly and Ashley. Weird. Mary Steenburgen does her usual competent job playing the wife and matriarch, though I felt they let her fade a little into the background until she asserts herself near the end. So while this movie won’t enter my cycle of Christmas movies to watch annually, I enjoyed it just fine (tinged with the shadow of regret that it wouldn’t have taken much more to be very good). The writers do not have many film credits, so I hope they continue to write and improve. I won’t change the channel if I run across it in the future.