Last Christ­mas

Where­as Wham!’s 1984 sin­gle ​‘Last Christ­mas’ con­sists of a catchy mix of synths and sleigh bells, it’s the unmis­tak­able sound of alarm bells which cuts through Paul Feig’s slushy sea­son­al rom-com. Not long after we are intro­duced to Kate (Emil­ia Clarke), who has fall­en into a cheer­less rou­tine of casu­al sex and sofa hop­ping, she announces that she and George Michael are kin­dred spir­its. Both have, in her words, been mis­un­der­stood and under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed in their time.

Although this could be inter­pret­ed as a sly com­ment on the obses­sive and shal­low nature of fan­dom, Kate’s ​“love me; love George Michael!” mot­to nonethe­less estab­lish­es her as delu­sion­al at worst and mis­in­formed at best. Michael was adored around the globe, first as one half of the afore­men­tioned British pop duo and lat­er as a solo act. He has sold over 115 mil­lion records world­wide, mak­ing him one of the most suc­cess­ful music artists of all time. ​‘Last Christ­mas’ is always played on the radio this time of year, but on Box­ing Day 2016, when news of his death broke, his great­est hits flood­ed the airwaves.

Like Kate, Last Christ­mas is unequiv­o­cal in its appre­ci­a­tion of Michael, but it fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands the dar­ing indi­vid­u­al­ism and self-dep­re­cat­ing wit that under­pinned his best work. Accord­ing to Emma Thomp­son, who con­ceived the sto­ry with hus­band Greg Wise and co-wrote the screen­play with Bry­ony Kim­mings, and who co-stars as Kate’s bol­shy Croat moth­er, Michael gave the pro­duc­tion carte blanche over use of his cat­a­logue, includ­ing a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased song called ​‘This is How (We Want to Get High)’. Per­haps we should count it as a bless­ing that he’s not around to wit­ness the result.

With her aspir­ing musi­cal the­atre career on hold (indef­i­nite­ly, giv­en her evi­dent lack of tal­ent), Kate works at a Christ­mas-themed shop in Covent Gar­den sell­ing tacky dec­o­ra­tions to tourists. She is obvi­ous­ly mis­er­able, and is shown lit­tle sym­pa­thy by her demand­ing boss ​“San­ta” (Michelle Yeoh, adding more sparkle than was strict­ly required). It soon tran­spires, how­ev­er, that Kate’s neg­a­tive atti­tude and increas­ing alco­hol depen­dan­cy are a con­se­quence of a seri­ous and deeply trau­mat­ic ill­ness which, on a psy­cho­log­i­cal lev­el, she is yet to recov­er from.

Hope arrives in the form of Tom (Hen­ry Gold­ing), who despite his per­sis­tent creepi­ness (which the film reas­sures us isn’t a prob­lem, basi­cal­ly because he’s extreme­ly hand­some) man­ages to con­vince Kate to give hap­pi­ness one more try. After prompt­ly insert­ing him­self into her life, he sets about dis­pens­ing advice on how to heal while point­ing out her every mis­step, like a mansplain­ing guardian angel you’d still fuck. Their meet-cute is ini­ti­at­ed by an act of sud­den, vio­lent defe­ca­tion, as our luck­less hero­ine, hav­ing fol­lowed Tom’s nag­ging­ly repet­i­tive faux­man­tic instruc­tion to ​“look up”, cops an eye­ful from a pass­ing bird. Which is fit­ting, see­ing as the film craps all over Michael’s musi­cal legacy.

It’s not just the epony­mous hol­i­day clas­sic: ​‘Free­dom’, ​‘Heal the Pain’, ​‘Wait­ing for that Day’, ​‘Pray­ing for Time’ and sev­er­al oth­er Michael favourites round out the sound­track, each nee­dle drop more grat­ing­ly on-the-nose than the last. A glum Kate con­tem­plates her choic­es alone in a bar: play ​‘Move On’. A hun­gover Kate is awok­en by a friend whose apart­ment she’s crash­ing at: cue ​‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’. A repen­tant Kate decides to vol­un­teer at a home­less shel­ter: fade up ​‘Faith’. The film may poke fun at the way con­sumer cul­ture exploits and dilutes pop­u­lar music, but it’s guilty of the exact same thing.

Being about a self-loathing, some­what klutzy, invari­ably horny young woman liv­ing in Lon­don, and with nar­ra­tive padding pro­vid­ed by an absent spir­i­tu­al anchor, dis­tant par­ents, and a long-stand­ing feud with a suc­cess­ful, high­ly-strung sis­ter, Last Christ­mas could almost pass for a cut-price fes­tive Fleabag. But it lacks the charm, inci­sive­ness and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Mil­len­ni­al sit­com. It also com­mits the car­di­nal sin of virtue sig­nalling while hav­ing noth­ing of val­ue to say about any of the social issues that are crow­barred into the script: chiefly the rise of rough sleep­ing in the UK’s urban cen­tres, the pro­tec­tion of migrant work­ers’ rights post-Brex­it and, for rea­sons known only to Thomp­son and co, resid­ual ten­sions between for­mer Yugosla­vian nationals.

Kate, mean­while, is por­trayed as messy and unsta­ble – she con­stant­ly looks like she’s about to fall over, and fre­quent­ly does – right up to the point Tom decides he’s sat­is­fied that she has accept­ed (and fixed) her flaws. Only then is she deemed to be whole. On top of every­thing, the film sub­scribes to a pure­ly cos­met­ic, social media-approved view of self-improve­ment, treat­ing human fal­li­bil­i­ty as some­thing to be con­tained and min­imised. By the time Kate realis­es her small dream of per­form­ing on stage, in a cringe­wor­thy finale that’s rem­i­nis­cent of a John Lewis Christ­mas ad for all the wrong rea­sons, any good­will gen­er­at­ed by Michael’s ini­tial endorse­ment has long since melt­ed away.