‘Happiest Season’ is a new classic
Every year, there is at least one Christmas movie that sparks the question: will this one be the next timeless holiday classic? Will it be the next “Shop Around the Corner” or “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Or will it be another “Daddy’s Home?”
Most of the time, it’s “Daddy’s Home” or, even worse, “Daddy’s Home 2.”
But “Happiest Season” has a chance of taking the big leap, in that it’s good enough that audiences might enjoy returning to it every holiday season. It’s genuinely funny. It’s heartfelt. It has a family atmosphere. And it gets extra credit for being one of the first lesbian Christmas movies, or at least the first one to have a famous cast.
In the opening minutes, we meet Harper and Abby (played by Mackenzie Davis and Kristen Stewart, respectively), who are out and about one night in the city, in this case, Pittsburgh. They’re in a relationship that’s fairly new, but established enough to be solid.
In a moment of exuberance, Harper asks Abby to join her and her family for five days over the Christmas holiday. She wants her to meet the parents.
It turns out the invitation was the kind of thing people say when they get carried away, sometimes by alcohol, sometimes just by the fact that it’s nighttime. In the sober light of morning, Harper has a conflict, which she hesitates to reveal until the couple is halfway to the parents’ house: She has not come out to Mom and Dad. They have no idea she’s gay.
This is where having a fantastic actress as Abby comes in handy. When Harper tells her she is going to have to pose as her roommate and keep the relationship secret, it’s a privilege to be looking at the ultrasensitive emotional seismograph that is Kristen Stewart’s face. Every flicker of thought and feeling is there: Annoyance, mild anger, sympathy, frustration, affection, disillusionment, a vague sense of betrayal, goodhumored dread and, finally, a willingness to roll with it.
Just watching Stewart in this role — as she looks at Harper, sees her interact with her family and wonders if there’s a future to their relationship at all — is a large part of the pleasure of “Happiest Season.” There are other pleasures, too, such as Aubrey Plaza’s contained performance as Harper’s childhood girlfriend, who knows exactly what it’s like to come up against Harper’s terror of offending the family.
The comic talent is strong: Mary Holland as Harper’s hapless, people-pleasing younger sister and Alison Brie as Harper’s perpetually sour older sister. Dan Levy is hilarious in a handful of scenes as Abby’s best friend. And then there’s Mary Steenburgen as Harper’s mother, who has no idea she keeps insulting and condescending Abby. She truly believes she’s just being nice.
Clea Duvall, who directed and co-wrote the film, understands that families have their own rules and logic, and that they’re hard to escape. We can look at the emotional prisons other people willingly agree to live in yet never quite see the delusions, compromises and assumptions of our own. And no one ever leaves the family cellblock without actively wanting to. It’s not a matter of talking someone into it. It has to come from them.
As with the best Christmas movies, like “Love, Actually” and “A Christmas Carol,” it’s life, not the holidays, that’s the true focus. Though it’s impossible to take one’s eyes off Stewart, Davis is very good at conveying Harper’s hell. Here’s this young woman, once more in the place where she grew up. Back then, she lived a not-quite-true version of herself and her easiest course now — her reflex — is to slip back into the old role.
But this time, there’s Abby as a witness to her lie, serving as a constant reminder that she is, in fact, living in one. This is pressure, both on Harper and on the relationship.
Everyone in the movie is excellent, everyone is tonally spoton, and no one has a single bad moment, which is another way of saying that Duvall, best known as an actress (“Veep,” “Argo”), is a real director. She has made one of the best Christmas movies of the millennium.
Running time: 102 minutes Rating: PG-13 (profanity)