Happy Christmas

Dir: Joe Swanberg

2014

***

I thought Joe Swanberg’s 2013 film Drinking Buddies was pretty good, although I think the whole ‘mumblecore’ movement is a bit ridiculous. His 2014 follow up Happy Christmas is a film very much in the same vein, but not quite as accomplished. I’m all for improvisation, and when you realise that there was absolutely no script and only an outline of what each actor/character was meant to do, it’s actually quite remarkable. However, some of the actors are better at it than others. Lene Dunham is quite at home with improvisation is better at it then everyone else by some margin. On the other end of the scale, Anna Kendrick, who I do really like, is awful. Her entire dialogue throughout the film is ‘But like, but like, I dunno, but like’ and it gets pretty tedious. The story has very little to do with Christmas, it just so happens to take place during the festive season but to be fair it does deal with some of the emotions associated with it. The thing is though, Drinking Buddies had a point to it and a rewarding conclusion, Happy Christmas on the other had is one of those incredibly frustrating films that acts as a slight window into a handful of people’s lives. It has a beginning and a middle but utterly fails in producing an ending. There is a nice little five minute scene just after the first set of credits roll up the screen but it is just a great bit of improvisation that belonged in the middle of the story. It is clearly a low-budget, easy-going, lets-get-out-there-and-film-something venture, and as an ex-film student I’m all about that way of making films, it’s just all a little too casual, and in trying so desperately to come across as natural, the film ends up looking incredibly forced. They might as well be jumping up and down screaming “look at us, we’ve got no script, we’re making all of this stuff up and it is brilliant!”, instead of thinking of something interesting to say. I didn’t really relate to any of the characters either, I did in Drinking Buddies but Happy Christmas features characters I’ve have ever met before. It’s far from the ‘coming of age’ film it thinks it is either and to think of it as a rites of passage film is pretty absurd too. The best thing about the film is its best actor. No, not the leading lady Anna Kendrick, not the very talented Lena Dunham or director Joe Swanberg – but his baby son Jude. That kid is super adorable with buckets full of charm. He is by far the best thing about the film and you can kind of tell that the other actors are thinking the exact same thing. Easy to watch and I suppose you could call it a refreshing alternative Christmas film but Joe Swanberg needs to pull a new trick out of his sleeve as I think this style of film making has limited appeal and a definite shelf-life.