Michelle Pfeiffer plays a mom on the edge at Christmas time in the new movie “Oh. What. Fun.” If the sarcastic punctuation wasn’t enough of a tip off, Pfeiffer’s character Claire is not having the best time.
Claire’s grown kids (Felicity Jones, Chloë Grace Moretz, Dominic Sessa ) don’t appreciate her efforts. Her husband (Denis Leary) is supportive without being helpful. And she is operating as a one woman show, managing this precious time with her family and trying to keep it all cozy and happy and fun through constant, thankless labor (cooking, cleaning, wrapping, planning). She even looks fabulous on her many, many (too many?) garbage runs. But after one particularly cruel oversight from her family, she takes off from her suburban prison and doesn’t tell anyone. For once, she’s decided to go do something for herself.
Promising though it may seem, “Oh. What. Fun” is a movie that does very little with its setup and terrific cast (including the likes of Danielle Brooks, Joan Chen, Maude Apatow, Rose Abdoo and Eva Longoria in almost cameo-sized roles) opting instead for the most generic version of itself.
The movie, streaming Wednesday on Prime Video, begins with a kind of “low point” (for a beautiful, well-off, stay-at-home Texas mom, that is) in which she tells some children in a neighboring car at a gas station to be nicer to their exhausted mother in the front seat. “She’ll be dead someday,” she says calmly and seriously. She wishes the mother a Merry Christmas, gives the kids a piercing look and then we get the dreaded freeze-frame/record scratch and a voiceover about being entitled to a little outburst around the holidays and a half-hearted rant about how many holiday movies are about men. Already this movie is making this poor woman apologize.
“They need to make a movie about the true heroes of the holidays: Moms,” Claire says. Sure, yes, preach Claire, even if her exclusions are suspect and her examples need further review. I’m pretty sure “Home Alone” was at least a little bit about the mom, and that “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” doesn’t deserve the vitriol. Alas, noble intentions aside, “Oh. What. Fun.” probably wasn’t what she had in mind.
Director Michael Showalter co-wrote the script with the short story’s author, Chandler Baker and is committed to keeping the proceedings light and breezy (no cancer diagnoses here). But the effect is a movie that seems almost embarrassed to commit to its own silly premise, rushing through everything instead of letting us enjoy this cast. Everyone gets assigned one tidy problem or flaw and no one has any sort of lived-in familial chemistry with one another.
Channing (Jones) is the oldest and is married to Doug (Jason Schwartzman) who really wants her younger sister Taylor (Moretz) to think he’s cool although Taylor, a serial monogamist who always brings a new woman home for the holidays, is just mean to him. Sessa is the youngest: Underemployed and recently dumped. There are two grandchildren too, Channing and Doug’s twins, but they’re nonentities.
Claire wants one thing for Christmas: For her family to have submitted her to a contest to meet her favorite daytime talk show host, Zazzy Tims (Longoria). Of course no one got the hint. But her breaking point really comes when she realizes everyone has gone to an event that she planned without her. No one noticed she wasn’t in one of the cars. And so instead of driving herself to meet them, she decides to drive to Burbank and crash the Zazzy Tims show instead.
Showalter attempts to turn this road trip into a kind of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” journey, even having her share a dingy motel room with Brooks, playing a suspiciously contented delivery driver (a little on the nose for an Amazon movie). But it barely commits to the bit and they soon go their separate ways instead of embarking on a buddy trip.
There must be a kind of director’s jail for such restrained use of a performer like Schwartzman (as Claire’s son-in-law), or using Chen as a one-joke “perfect” neighbor with her all-white and silver Christmas decorations.
In its own way, “Oh. What. Fun.” has also accidentally tapped into the cinematic zeitgeist. This is a year in which on screen mothers aren’t just on the edge – they’re in complete and total freefall. Jennifer Lawrence’s feral barking in “Die My Love,” Rose Byrne’s waking nightmare in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Jessie Buckley’s primal agony in “Hamnet.” Even Teyana Taylor’s postpartum apathy in “One Battle After Another” could fit.
Lighter versions are welcome too – there’s nothing like comedic release. But if the idea was to make something for the moms, “Oh. What. Fun.” is about as thoughtful as a hastily scribbled card on a piece of printer paper the morning of her birthday. We can all do better.
“Oh. What. Fun.” An Amazon MGM Studios release streaming Dec. 3 is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 106 minutes. Two stars out of four.
