Last Christmas (2019)

We went to see “Last Christmas” (2019) because my wife loves Emilia Clarke and I love Emma Thompson. There was only one other person in the theater with us, so they’re probably the one person who went to see it because of Henry Golding.

I don’t like rom-coms as a genre because they’re painfully predictable and rely almost exclusively on the “these two people love each other but inexplicably can’t string a cohesive sentence together to effectively tell the other person their feelings and now there’s an entirely unnecessary issue caused by entirely avoidable miscommunication that they have to puzzle out before they conveniently remember how much they super-duper love each other and nothing else in the world matters” plot device.
If it’s not that, then it’s the ‘young adult’ equivalent which is “one of us is going to die from cancer, so lets live life to the fullest and kiss in the rain somewhere before a funeral and a sappy epilogue.” 

However, “Last Christmas” completely broke the mold. 
Kate (Emilia Clarke) was a Yugoslavian immigrant to England who was trying to find her own way while being constantly harangued by her very traditional mother (Emma Thompson). Tom (Henry Golding) was the closest thing to a ‘manic pixie dream boy’ that I’ve ever seen: too happy, too easily entertained, did weird skip jumps to avoid foot-traffic on the sidewalk, etc.
Despite her desire for her own individual fulfillment, Kate’s life was a slow-motion train wreck, with every tumble and misstep being something entirely her fault that she could have easily avoided, but didn’t. A chance run-in with Tom got her to start seeing life through a new lens, in a way that helped her entirely turn things around for the better, which coincided with Kate and Tom falling for each other.

While the movie did stray very close to the dreaded rom-com plot device identified above, it pulled itself back quickly and found a better path. 
In fact, it wasn’t even a path I was expecting to see - there was a hella-good plot twist in there that caught me completely by surprise. 
About half-way through the movie, Megan leaned over and whispered what she thought it was, which was magnitudes closer than anything I thought - again, I was expecting this movie to be solidly cookie-cutter. Her guess was wrong, but still close, and the ending was outstanding.
I’m not going to even try to hint it here because I want you to watch it and experience the twist for yourself - it was stunningly done and made for damn-near perfect closure for all of the characters.

While the A plot was about Kate getting her life together, the B plot was about her fixing her relationship with her mother, which, as it turned out, had some roots in their evacuation from the former Yugoslavia and the current real-life Brexit turmoil that the UK is facing. The C plot was snippets of ‘Santa’ (Michelle Yeoh) and her love-at-first-sight interest, ‘Boy’ (Peter Mygind), which was both absolutely hilarious to watch and clearly a roast of other rom-coms and their “I can’t think straight with you in the room” levels of puppy-love.

Despite being a rom-com, this movie passed the Bechtel Test, with Kate having many conversations with her mother, sister, and Santa, and only a few of those ever being about Tom or her father.

The dialogue throughout was outstanding. Kate had a constant series of snarky, sarcastic commentary that, even when flirting with Tom, didn’t cross the line into quippy. Santa had a few good lines as well, all regarding her tough-love feelings for Kate’s work ethic. Tom was pleasant, though never particularly funny, which is fine - I think if his lines had been funny too, then that in conjunction with Kate’s lines would have gone too far.
Even when Kate and Tom weren’t flirting and were just opening up to each other, their dialog was clean and clear without becoming sappy or saccharine-sweet. The on-screen chemistry between the two of them was fantastic.

Entertainingly, “Last Christmas” was scored entirely by WHAM! songs, starting with their cover of the christmas tune “Last Christmas,” which was then also covered by Kate at the end of the movie. I was surprised at how well Clarke could sing.

This was an outstanding holiday-themed rom-com. I’m surprised at how few show times there were at the theater, how empty the theater was, and how little advertising or conversation there seems to have been about it. 
By the time you read this, it’ll probably be too late for you to see it in theaters, but it’s more than worth it to rent and watch.

As I wrote this, I realized this movie deserved a 5-Claw rating. 
Other movies with this rating earn it for having stand-out soundtracks, or being visually/graphically gorgeous, or otherwise somehow worthy of being viewed in IMAX. While “Last Christmas” will look just as good on a standard 1080p screen in your living room, or on your phone, the sheer strength of character that Clarke put into Kate, along with the completely non-standard plot line, pushed this movie far outside the standard realm of the genre, and for that, I commend Paul Feig (director) and Emma Thompson (writer). I will be very hard-pressed to ever see another rom-com that even comes close to being as good as this one.