Member-only story

‘Happiest Season’ Is Neither Rom Nor Com

mad dyke mag
11 min readFeb 23, 2021

--

the only time they looked happy in the entire movie

My expectations for Happiest Season weren’t exactly what I’d call high, and yet somehow the movie just barely grazed that incredibly low bar. As I suspected, most of the jokes were given away in the trailer, and in lieu of any well-developed, interesting characters, this “comedy” is full of wacky, over-the-top personalities that make no actual sense in the real world, and worse, aren’t funny! This movie was so ‘meh’ it took me two months to write this review.

We meet Abby (Kstew) and Harper (maybe someone from Westworld??) as they’re taking some kind of Christmas-themed tour through Pittsburgh. Harper has that kind of adult-child energy female leads in rom coms are famous for. (Similar to Disney-loving adult energy.) She’s bummed Abby doesn’t like Christmas and for some reason thinks taking her on a walking tour through Pittsburgh in December will make her change her mind. (Also, anyone over a certain age who *loves* Christmas is not well.)

We later learn Abby doesn’t like Christmas because BOTH OF HER PARENTS ARE DEAD. Which, like, yeah, my parents are divorced and I don’t really like Christmas so I can honestly only imagine if they were DECEASED. And what is with the obsession with having parents die in Christmas-themed movies?? You know who doesn’t want to think about dead parents around the holidays? People who are alone because THEIR PARENTS…

--

--

Responses (2)