#marysteenbergen

You guys! I finally watched the lesbian holiday movie!! Though when I texted my mom to tell her I was finally watching this, she thought I was talking about The Prom and I laughed for a real long time about it (mainly because it will take me an even longer time to get around to hate watching that!) It already took about a month to get to this one. There is a lot to discuss here - and also one wig!

So this is the first (big budget) holiday lesbian movie, which I am very here for. However, most of the movie feels like a combination between My Best Friend’s Wedding, Meet the Parents, and The Family Stone but with lesbians. Those movies were made between 1997 and 2005 and this movie feels like it should exist somewhere in that time as well. The whole plot of the movie is basically that Kristen Stewart (Abby) has to pretend NOT to be Mackenzie Davis’s (Harper’s)  long-term girlfriend for the sake of Harper’s conservative family with local political aspirations while also spending 5 days with them during Christmas. It’s a conceit that exists solely in these brand of garbage holiday rom coms but definitely one that feels bizarrely antiquated as well. 

Anyway! There is only one wig in this movie which belongs to Davis, who had a vastly superior lesbian wig in that one episode of Black Mirror that made us all cry. We first see this under this hat where it should have hidden for the rest of the film! 

Sadly, the next scene involves the full emergence of this wig and truly: NO. This thing is dried out, bent, and disheveled in not a cool way (Stewart’s actual hair is disheveled in a cool way, though). The entire presence of this wig bothers me because: just have her have whatever hair she has? This is not a historical recreation (that I’m aware of?) and she is not playing a real person! This feels like when SNL cast members wear wigs in sketches for similarly non-existent reasons. However, SNL wigs are vastly superior to this mess!

So anyway, Harper invites Abby to have Christmas at her parents’ house in the heat of the moment during a very romantic (?) Pittsburgh Christmas lights tour which is apparently something that exists. Abby conveniently, and completely for the sake of this plot to work (?) does not like Christmas and also is an orphan, getting rid of any possible Christmas plan conflicts. And then literally on the way to visiting Harper’s family, she is all: by the way, they don’t know you’re my girlfriend or that I’m a lesbian and you have to go along with it for sake of this movie to exist even though this is absolutely a terrible thing to ask of anyone, periodt. But we are beginning to find out that Harper’s character is as full of garbage as her wig. 

So we meet the parents, who are Victor Garber, Mary Steenbergen, and also Mary Steenbergen’s iPad which vulture correctly identifies as the star of this movie AND IT IS. Especially during the end credits where we get to see all the pics the iPad takes! But I’m getting ahead of myself. The parents live in one of those cavernous houses that is definitely a mansion but tries to feel homey even though it probably has about 12 bedrooms and usually only exists in a Nancy Meyers movie. Despite its amount of bedrooms,  Abby has to sleep in a basement bunker which also doubles as a well organized rubbermaid storage unit. For the rest of the movie, Abby is treated like a subhuman trash person much in the way Ben Stiller is treated in Meet the Parents and Sarah Jessica Parker is treated in The Family Stone, except they don’t also have to pretend to not be in a relationship with the family member they arrived with. This conceit becomes so degrading that you honestly wonder why these people are still together!

Abby endures scene after scene of total nonsense and still looks better than the wig on her terrible girlfriend. Which starts actually looking better in a few of these scenes but still is very much a terrible and noticeable wig which is on par with Rachel McAdams’ wig in Mean Girls in that we are constantly told that these women are gorgeous and every single time I ask “YOU MEAN WITH THAT TERRIBLE WIG ON THEIR HEADS????” I suppose this wig was “necessary” because Harper’s two sisters also have long-ish brown hair so they were going for some sort of familial consistency except one daughter has a terrible wig and the other two have hair. Also one sister is Alison Brie, who plays a harpy so awful that she starts to make Harper look palatable and one sister is Mary Holland, who also cowrote the script, and definitely wrote herself the only character who I’d like to meet in real life. 

Along the way, we also meet Aubrey Plaza, who I usually hate because she is just one-note sullen, but here is actually great as Harper’s high school ex-girlfriend who Harper outted and allowed to be bullied and wow Harper - you have been terrible for decades!! Also compared to Harper, Aubrey has beautiful (real) hair, doesn’t lie to her entire family, and has actual chemistry with Abby. I very much wanted Abby to end up with Aubrey and I am not alone! Harper somehow avoids Abby for most of the time they are both staying in the same (albeit huge) house and there is even a dumb subplot about Abby being framed for shoplifting while trying to buy a gift for the parents’ very important white elephant gift exchange during their very important Christmas Eve party and I wonder if any of these people really knows what a white elephant gift is or how to exist in society? Meanwhile, as Harper reverts to being more falsely  heteronormative at her parents house, I started to wonder if her wig was trying to serve a larger purpose in showing how fake this character is but: no it’s just a bad wig. Also this movie really does the impossible: it makes me care about and feel bad for Kristen Stewart! 

Although I did find it highly questionable that though they are the stars of a romantic comedy, neither Kristen Stewart or Mackenzie Davis is funny AT ALL. Like not even a little! Which makes the “comedic” plight of Stewart all the more upsetting! All comedy is left to the one good daughter (Mary Holland) and also all gay men in the movie. This is mainly Abby’s bff and national (Canadian) treasure, Dan Levy and also Drag Race faves Jinxx Monsoon and Ben De-La-Creme in this one gay bar scene which is honestly truly inconceivable and except for further cementing the fact that Abby and Aubrey really should get together. 

In the end, Alison Brie finds out Harper’s TERRIBLE SECRET THAT NO ONE IN 2020 COULD POSSIBLY FATHOM (that she’s a lesbian) and they have a fight in the middle of the white elephant party which reveals that all the family has been competing for years for each other’s love which is really really messed up and now I kind of hate everyone in this family. And also Harper is outed to her entire terrible family and also Ana Gasteyer (and also a room full of other randos). And she denies her lesbian truth!  I recently watched Uncle Frank which is essentially everything Hillbilly Elegy wanted to be but is Shakespeare compared to that mess, and a similar scene occurs but that character bravely faces the truth - and in 1970s SOUTH CAROLINA!! I don’t know what time or space this movie thinks it exists in but it is baffling. Still, Dan Levy gives an emotional monologue about how no one can decide when anyone else is ready to come out of the closet so: FAIR. And then Harper does come out and the entire family kind gives absolutely no reaction to this until Victor Garber says it’s ok?? ABSOLUTELY AND TRULY BIZARRELY PATRIARCHAL. And then Harper and Abby get back together in the parking lot of a Love’s convenience store which is as cheesy and clunky as any garbage holiday rom com so I guess this is definitely a new holiday “classic” which I’ll probably watch 100 more times and hate Harper and her terrible wig each time about as much as I hate Laura Linney’s terrible life choices in Love, Actually. AS CONFOUNDING AS HARPER’S WIG OR THE CHOICE TO GIVE HER ONE AT ALL!

VERDICT: DOESN’T WURQ