Review: OH. WHAT. FUN.

 by Adam Thas

Going it alone for a new streaming Christmas movie.

This started out with a discussion with my wife and myself as to whether or not we were going to review Oh. What. Fun. for "Adam and Alison Watch Christmas Movies." We decided against it, which then led to a conversation about when a movie is too big or has too big a budget to considered in the genre of “Hallmark Holiday Rom-Com.” We haven’t quite figured out where the line is going to be drawn, but for me it’s when I’ve heard of the director before. In this case, Michael Showalter was too big a name (which says a lot about the holiday rom-com genre) for the column.

Oh. What. Fun. starts out telling you exactly what it wants to be. The opening scene is a voice-over from Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Claire, going through all the famous holiday movies pointing out how they all follow men and there are not any movies from the women’s point of view. To be fair, she’s right. Think of a holiday movie off the top of your head. Chances are that movie either follows kids or men, with most examples of women being side characters who can usually best be described a “tolerant.”

After reading the synopsis and seeing the trailer, it would stand to reason that Oh. What. Fun. is going to be a mix between multiple holiday movies but told from a woman’s point of view. For the much of the first act, that is what it sets up. After the opening narration, the movie begins proper with Claire’s house in the Texas suburbs, where she is obsessed with Christmas decoration and a neighbor she can’t stand (National Lampoons: Christmas Vacation). Slowly we are introduced to her husband, Nick (Denis Leary); her daughter, Taylor (Chloe Grace Moretz); her son, Sammy (Dominic Sessa); her eldest daughter, Channing (Felicity Jones), and Channing’s husband Doug (Jason Schwartzman). Claire only wants two things for Christmas:  to make a magical holiday for her family and to be nominated by her family as a “Holiday Mom” on the fictional Zazzy Tims Show. After a series of mix-ups, Claire’s family leaves for a holiday concert and leaves Claire at home (Home Alone). This causes Claire to snap and, since none of her family nominated her, she decides to drive cross country to Burbank and attend the Zazzy Tims Show (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles).

The set-up is there, it's executed perfectly, and the table for a great holiday movie is set. The possibilities are endless with all the points that could be explored as Claire travels across the country. Would she meet her John Candy and go on some zany adventure? Would she booby trap a house and fight off robbers? Maybe she will run into an elf and needs to fix Santa’s sleigh? We get none of that. They do try: Claire needs to share a room with an annoying sleeper and buys a used car, but besides that Claire becomes the very thing the movie claims to be a against -- a side character in a holiday movie. There are no zany adventures, there are no roadblocks put up for our character to navigate through. She just drives to California as the camera spends time with her family.

Oh. What. Fun. suffers from what so many ensemble movies suffer from: they’re trying to tell so many different stories that rather than getting one good story you end up getting a handful of half-assed ones. Oh. What. Fun. is clearly trying to channel several Christmas movies, including Christmas Vacation, another holiday classic with a large ensemble cast. The reason Christmas Vacation works is because everyone besides Clark Griswald is a one-note character. No one has an arc besides Clark. The weird part is that Showalter knows this; after all, he wrote one of the funniest and greatest ensemble movies of all time in Wet Hot American Summer. The frustration with Oh. What. Fun. is that there's a movie hiding in there somewhere. There is a good moment with Claire and her husband Nick where they talk about becoming complacent in marriage. There is a side story with Channing and Claire about not feeling supported that just sputters out and feels unearned. Had the movie included more comedy beats and concentrated on what it wanted to be -- a movie told from the women’s point of view -- that might have worked.

There is another thing going on in Oh. What. Fun. that's a bit more difficult to talk about. After Claire decides to leave for California, the movie decides to stay on the family storyline so intensely that it feels like it’s channeling another Christmas movie in It’s a Wonderful Life, where we watch what life is like for the family without Claire. It goes poorly and her family melts down without her to the extent that her husband Nick needs to lie down and profess how he doesn’t know what to do without Claire. To compare Oh. What. Fun. and It’s a Wonderful Life may seem fair in this regard, but when you juxtapose the two movies, both come at the idea of showing what the lives of others would be like without the main character from two separate directions. In It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey reaches his low point and wants the life of his family to be better without him. He and the audience are shown he’s wrong. When Claire reaches her low point, she no longer cares what happens with her family and concludes that her family would fall apart without her, an assertion the audience (and eventually Claire herself) are shown to be correct. Claire then finds herself smoking weed with a group of women as they complain about how terrible their families. She then publicly reaffirms how horribly she’d been treated by her family a second time.

There are women in the world that feel  unappreciated by their families for any number of reasons. This movie, and particularly Claire, are meant to speak to them. But outside of this demographic, Claire becomes very unlikable. To put it another way, Claire feels unappreciated by her family that has come from all over the country to be with her for the holidays. She leaves her million-dollar house and family in her Audi to get the present no one got her for Christmas. In the end, Claire is vindicated after she finds out how terrible her family’s life was without her.

On a positive note, when discussing the movie with each other, it did turn into a very informative and enlightening discussion with my wife about the culture surrounding the movie. For a director like Showalter, though, who has made hilarious and compassionate movies in the past, he creates a movie with very little laughs and some incredibly unlikable characters. While the movie was supposed to be a pro-mom, pro-woman, mold-breaking venture into holiday movies, it misses the mark in about everything it sets out to do.

Oh. What. Fun. is streaming now.