So I’ve finally seen Last Christmas, the critically panned rom (ummm) com (errrr) written by Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings, and the first thing to say is, “Hooo boy.” The second thing is, “Whatever Emma was smoking when she came up with that movie’s plot twist, which has now ruined Wham! for ever, well, I’ll have what she’s having.” Actually, you know what? I’m all right, Emma. Keep it for yourself.
Last Christmas is one of those films that is so deranged it feels like a strange fever dream. In this sense, it’s like the 80s comedy Mannequin, a charming romantic comedy about a man finding true love with a plastic doll. Or maybe it’s closer to Soul Man – another movie, like Last Christmas, that ruined a good song by stealing its title – in which a white kid takes a load of tanning pills in order to baggsie a Harvard scholarship for African Americans. Yes, this is a movie that actually exists.
Unlike Soul Man, Last Christmas does not feature “comedy” blackface. But on the bus home afterwards, I had a debate with myself about which was its most bonkers moment: Thompson casting herself as a depressed former Yugoslavian immigrant? The faintly depressing onslaught of cameos from people who are really too good for the script? (Patti LuPone, for God’s sake. Patti LuPone.) In fact, never mind Soul Man, Last Christmas is more reminiscent of those bewildering comedies that were once the mainstay of the British film industry before Four Weddings And A Funeral made everyone up their game. Ever seen Wilt, starring Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith? Or Blame It On The Bellboy, featuring Dudley Moore, Richard Griffiths and Patsy Kensit? No? Don’t worry too much about it.
And then there’s the plot twist. Regular readers will know that I have very strong feelings about what constitutes a good Christmas movie, and I have similarly firm ideas about plot twists. A good twist will make everything in the movie come together. A bad one makes the entire film fall apart. Despite Last Christmas’ best attempts to copy the “Chazz Palminteri dropping his coffee cup as he realises the truth about Keyser Söze” moment in The Usual Suspects, you cannot jazzhands away the fact that the plot twist is the most ludicrously WTF moment in a film since Donald Trump strolled up to have a chat with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2.
And yet, Last Christmas is the No 1 movie in Britain. That’s right, a film best described as “The Sixth Sense, directed by Richard Curtis on ketamine” is the one everyone wants to see. It’s never a good look for journalists to express bewilderment about the choices of the general public, whether that’s political parties or Christmas movies. It’s the writer’s job to find out why people feel the way they do, not to sneer at them for not feeling otherwise, and I reckon that the success of Last Christmas says quite a lot about Britain 2019.
Most obviously, this will be a pretty depressing Christmas. Not in your home, which I’m sure will be lovely. But we’ve had three and a half years of a political hellscape and it’s unlikely anyone’s going to be feeling any less exhausted after this godforsaken election. So I blame no one for seeking light escapism in a movie about a woman permanently dressed as an elf. Is that really more mad than anything Jacob Rees-Mogg says or, for that matter, wears?
Jukebox stage musicals, in which a musician’s oeuvre is hung around the most dubious of plots, have been joined by jukebox movies, with Last Christmas (which pillages poor George Michael’s back catalogue) following in the lucrative steps of Mamma Mia!, Bohemian Rhapsody, Yesterday and Rocketman. Jukebox movies are the ultimate populist movies, in that the people love them and the elites – the critics – hate them. It’s this that makes Last Christmas the perfect Brexit Christmas movie. Thompson would, I suspect, be horrified to hear that, given the way she shoehorns her dislike of Brexit into the movie. But, like Brexit, everyone comes out of Last Christmas badly. Once, Thompson wrote Sense And Sensibility, possibly the greatest film adaptation of all time. Now she literalises Wham! lyrics. Similarly, I am – as I may have mentioned once or a million times before – no fan of Love, Actually, but not even I can deny that film’s magnitude and glossiness. Next to that, Last Christmas looks second-rate, absurd, inexplicable. A bit like Britain after Brexit, in other words. Last Christmas is us.
It would be bizarre, right now, to release a big shiny movie about the perfection of Christmas, because no one in this country is feeling big, shiny or perfect. We’re feeling small and confused, and Last Christmas is small and confusing. I saw it on a rainy night, and at first I could sense the confusion among the audience. But when the twist was revealed, we all burst out laughing. God, it felt good: the first moment of collective connection many of us had felt with our fellow citizens for a while. So thank you, Last Christmas, for showing us who we are, and for allowing us to laugh at ourselves. Whether you meant to or not.
