Who is this movie for? Which 30-something daughter of a councilman running for the office of mayor in a small Midwest town is vibing with MacKenzie Davis? Wife thinks that Davis is kind of a monster, asking Stewart to come home with her for the holidays when she has no intention of actually coming out to her parents or informing Stewart about it until they are on the highway?
The only way I can think of explaining the dynamic is by trying to ask, Haven’t you ever made poor decisions in the pursuit of someone beautiful? Which apparently was the wrong question, even if it would have made for a more true tagline for this movie. Friend said over the phone in response to this criticism, “Go on the Internet and find fanfic of the ending of the movie where Stewart and Plaza get together.” From the first moment that Davis didn’t stick up for Stewart after she’s been accused of shoplifting, Wife declared that she would be upset if the ending of this movie required them to stay together. The word she used to describe the ending was “shoe-horned,” as in, why does the father suddenly have a sea-change in his emotionally abusive parenting after decades of prioritizing his children’s perfection over their happiness?
In 2020, the family that considers having a gay daughter a scandal is one that ought not take up too mental space, and yet. The family doesn’t even appear to be all that progressive even in terms of their own provincial small town, one still cosmopolitan enough to allow for a drag show on Christmas Eve. Aubrey Plaza serves as a sobering reminder of Davis’s callous disregard for others and a warning for Stewart’s character that Davis’s shamelessness knows no bounds. There are no punishments for bad behavior in this story: not for the psychopathic children of Allison Brie, who set Stewart up in the first place for shoplifting, certainly not for Brie herself who is responsible for outing her sister, not for Brie’s husband who’s caught violating the terms of their soon-to-be-ended marriage, not for Davis, whose wrongs are innumerable. I described the ex-boyfriend as a red herring of the plot who didn’t merit nearly as much screen time as he received, but Wife says that he just represents Davis falling back into old habits when she’s home. I’m not an especial fan of this.
All in all, Happiest Season is an alienating tale of heartbreak recognizable to the four or five girls from Rhode Island, who went on to become journalists at a big time newspaper, only to have their father “spend the life savings” on a minor mayoral election in hopes of “earning” his daughters’ love. An instant classic, to be sure.
