‘Tis the season to be jolly…I guess. To me though…LAST CHRISTMAS wasn’t very jolly at all. So instead of six paragraphs bashing a very lame rom-com dramedy that wasn’t meant for the likes of me, I am going to have my wife, who enjoyed the movie much more than I did, talk very briefly about why she liked it. She is definitely the Tiny Tim in this situation. If you want to know what my crotchety Krampus old self thought, stay tuned at the bottom for some lumps of coal in your merry stocking!!!

Diane’s thoughts:

Zach is such crap. This movie was sweet and heartfelt. The characters were real and relatable. All of the actor’s chemistry together was great. Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding were meant to be together. The twist is easy to spot and that’s OK. You don’t always need to be surprised at every go around. All the right things are there, family love and conflict, personal self growth and realization, with a bit of romance to make you happy. What the movie does leave you wanting is more romantic comedies with Emilia Clarke, she is so delightful and charming you just want to eat her up with a spoon. In the end, it was a lovely Christmas movie with all the things you expect and love to see happen on screen. If that is not what you want then don’t see it … (cough) Zach.

Ebenezer Zach’s thoughts:

Bah Humbug MOTHERFUCKERS!!! It’s Ebenezer Zach here to chime in with his scathing two cents. I thought Last Christmas was boring, unfunny, and just very dull. I almost fell asleep multiple times. In fact, I think the lame obvious twist that treats its audience as if they were idiots is the least harmful statistic about it. To keep this bag full of dislike I have short, let me go through the list. The script is uninspired. Cliched ho ho ho sappy dialogue about living your best life and doing better that has been done to better effect in a bunch of other movies you’ve seen before. I did not laugh once throughout the movie, and some of the jokes were really….odd, like they kept going on because they thought if they kept hammering in the joke that you’d eventually get it and laugh. I didn’t and I didn’t.

The movie is about this down on her luck girl that had a heart problem and, last Christmas, got a heart transplant. As she is trying to navigate the world and the holiday season one year later, a mysterious man randomly shows up in her life to try and teach her the correct way of living it. Saying the film was based off George Michael’s music was the first mistake this film made, because if you take every lyric about the song “Last Christmas” literally, the twist is so damn easy to figure out. I figured it out months ago without knowing every single line of that song. There were other ways to still have that twist that would’ve felt a little more earned and unique. Instead it just reminds you of a bunch of other movies that have that twist, all as lame as this movie (if you want me to list those movies, just message me so I don’t spoil it for others). What is also very insulting is that it was co-written by Emma Thompson, who has actually won an Academy Award for screenplay writing. She’s in this a little too as Clarke’s character’s mother, but she was kind of over-the-top yet still dull.

My wife was right on though with one thing, the only compliment I am going to give the movie: Emilia Clarke needs to be in more but better romantic comedies. This was easily her best performance in a film. She’s always been a bit weird to me in dramas, I never really bought her as Khaleesi in Game of Thrones (she was just hot to me), and she was a terrible Sarah Conner. But in this film, she plays her lovable self that you can see throughout interviews and social media, and she is just delightful. And Henry Golding, always proving his worth since Crazy Rich Asians, was good in this as well, and their chemistry together were the only bright spots in this dark hole of a film. But yeah, put this Emilia Clarke performance and add it to a better rom-com or even a rude and crude sexual humor one and she would be utterly fantastic.

Paul Feig is literally a hit and miss director. It seems that when one film is good, his next is always not so much. And I can prove it. Bridesmaids: great. The Heat: shit. Spy: Great. Ghostbusters 2016: fucking garbage. A Simple Favor: Good. And now this: crap. At least I can look forward to his next film, almost guaranteeing it to be at least half way decent. My last review was of Let It Snow, a Christmas film on Netflix, and instead of going out to see this cliched utter mess, I suggest staying inside with family and loved ones and watching that instead, even though that film wasn’t the best either. I wish it were Last Christmas, as that way this movie didn’t exist then and I wouldn’t have had to suffer through it.