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An underachieving young woman lives an aimless existence, until she meets a tall, dark stranger at Christmas.
Starring Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Emma Thompson
Written by Emma Thompson, Bryony Kimmings
Produced by David Livingstone, Emma Thompson, Paul Feig, Jessie Henderson
Duration 103 minutes
"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart ..."
Tying your film closely to a song. You've got your two basic ways of doing it.
There's the approach used by LAST CHRISTMAS, commonly known as the STAND BY ME method. That's where you name your film after a well-known, beloved hit.
If you're really serious, as STAND BY ME director Rob Reiner clearly was, you'll play this song over the end credits and even transpose its melody into the musical score. Further examples of this method include PRETTY WOMAN, SWEET HOME ALABAMA, YESTERDAY, MY GIRL, etc. (For the Reiner movie, they wanted to evoke their chosen classic so badly that they even renamed it after adapting it – from Stephen King's story 'The Body', part of his Different Seasons collection.)
Then you've got films for which a song is specially written that ends up taking on a life of its own. A classic case is Berlin's Oscar-winning 'Take My Breath Away' from TOP GUN, which arguably has the greatest soundtrack of the '80s – they released six singles from it!
TOP GUN was from the 'popbuster' era, often movies produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Other popbusting tunes include Irene Cara – 'What A Feeling' from FLASHDANCE (another winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Song); Maria McKee – 'Show Me Heaven' (DAYS OF THUNDER); and Coolio – 'Gangsta's Paradise' (DANGEROUS MINDS). The belated final nail in the coffin of this trend came in 1998, with Aerosmith's Godawful 'I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing' for ARMAGEDDON.
It's worth noting that when this second strategy is employed, the song's title rarely matches the movie's. The only one that comes to mind is Billy Idol's 'Speed' from SPEED. "Speeeed!" go the lyrics; "Give me what I needed!" they press on. Oh, and THAT THING YOU DO!, but there the original song was actually woven into the story.
For LAST CHRISTMAS, we get an entire soundtrack from one artist, a la THE BODYGUARD or PURPLE RAIN. The difference here is, unlike Whitney Houston or Prince, George Michael had sadly already passed away – three years before and on Christmas Day, no less. LAST CHRISTMAS positions itself as being "inspired by the music of George Michael and Wham!" and its soundtrack features 12 songs from him and three from the pop group he formed.
(The soundtrack lists George's rousing 'Freedom 90', but they missed a trick by not getting Tiesto or Calvin Harris or whoever to mash it together with Wham!'s earlier single 'Freedom' in a tranced-up remix. Or they could have done something similar with the way that 'Faith' opens with some bars of the 'Freedom' melody. Ah well.)
I was curious about the phrase "inspired by" used in the marketing. I knew that LAST CHRISTMAS wasn't an all-out musical (thank God and the baby Jesus), but to what extent would the film's story reflect the choice of songs? And how many of the tunes on the soundtrack would actually be played onscreen – would it be like that "Deluxe Edition" of the TOP GUN LP, which added '80s classics by REO Speedwagon, Mr Mister, Europe, Starship and Jennifer Rush that were nothing to do with the film?
George's 'Heal the Pain' is first out the gate, sung by a church choir, like with Prince's 'When Doves Cry' in Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET. It quickly segues into George's rendition on a pub jukebox, and our hapless protagonist Emilia Clarke, nursing a pint, quickly namechecks the man himself. The movie's title song then plays over the opening credits – and does again throughout, in various intentionally terrible cover versions.
Later, 'Too Funky' punctuates a quickie flashback about a quickie; 'I Want Your Sex' accompanies a frantic oh-shit-I'm-late sequence; 'Wake Me Up (Before You Go-Go)' and the opening of 'Fast Love' ("Gotta get up to get down") are unimaginatively used for scenes when the main character is waking up. There were a few more, but I gave up taking notes. But we did seem to cover all 15 soundtrack choices, or at least it certainly felt like it.
So yeah, it turns out that plot-wise, LAST CHRISTMAS is just a pretty routine romcom, one that sprinkles George's music throughout either randomly or on-the-nosely, all anchored by a game turn by Emilia Clarke as the lead. It does throw in a heart-tugging twist at the end, one that does explicitly reference 'Last Christmas' the song, albeit in the clumsiest possible way. (Go back to the opening line of this review, if you want a spoiler.)
In the spirit of Christmas goodwill, I won't be completely negative about this film. For one thing, at least LAST CHRISTMAS is not a typical film from Paul Feig, a terrible director in my opinion. I haven't seen his 2016 GHOSTBUSTERS, although not for the sexist reasons that spread across the internet at the time. It's because I'd tried Feig's first three efforts (BRIDESMAIDS, THE HEAT and SPY) and concluded that he suffers from the same annoying tendencies as his Freaks and Geeks alumni, Judd Apatow (although F&G was a good show, for what it's worth).
By this I mean every joke is milked to death, with actors allowed to improv scenes to the extent that they feel hours long. Many of those scenes desperately try to mine humour from characters hurling insults at each other, often of the "you're like a [insert famous person] version of [insert another famous person]" variety. There is a reluctance to use the editorial scissors running through both Feig's and Apatow's work; I myself have never seen the need for a comedy to last 2-plus hours, unless it's THE BLUES BROTHERS fitting in all its musical numbers and cameos, or BEAU IS AFRAID, where being a relentless endurance test is part of the point.
Another tick LAST CHRISTMAS gets from me is by being a British made and/or set romcom where, in Clarke, they actually cast a British lead actress. There's a weird trend in the genre where it seems like Hollywood doesn’t have any faith in our native ladies to capture hearts, and so they instead cast a hot young American – sometimes playing American, sometimes imitating a Brit.
I'm talking about FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (Andie MacDowell), NOTTING HILL (Julia Roberts), BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY (Renne Zellweger – London accent not bad), ABOUT TIME (Rachel McAdams – actually Canadian, but close enough) ... And sometimes Richard Curtis isn't even involved, like with WIMBLEDON (Kirsten Dunst) or MAN UP (Lake Bell) or ONE DAY (Anne Hathaway – Yorkshire accent awful) or SLIDING DOORS (Gwyneth Paltrow – London accent passable) or SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (Paltrow again – London accent passable, for the 16th Century) or A LIFE LESS ORDINARY (Cameron Diaz).
Oh, and final props to LAST CHRISTMAS for setting its opening in Brixton, South London. We swiftly switch to the more movie-conventional Covent Garden/Oxford Street/etc for the duration, but I appreciate the effort for geographical diversity in the Capital, however fleeting.
Two stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? Since the whole thing takes place in the
present, I'm gonna give it a 'no' in this case.
What would a movie called FIRST CHRISTMAS be about? Clarke
would be playing Mary. A character who has far fewer one-night stands, that's
for sure.
Previously: AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?
Next time: WRONG TURN 6: LAST RESORT
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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