Oh. What. Fun. and If I Had Legs I Would Kick You
OH. WHAT. FUN. I probably don’t need to defend my undimming affection for Christmas movies, but I am of a defensive, decking-the-halls extraction, so here we find ourselves. I am as aware of all the hypocrisy and bad faith action and indelicate consumerism that occludes the holiday as anyone. And I don’t really have any truck with the divinity of the Christ, even if I tend to stick to some of the how-tos we attribute to him. In spite of it all, though — or maybe, ever the contrarian, because of it — this holiday season helps to induce a sense of calm in me. Either from nostalgia or constant seeking of respite, there is a relief, a restfulness that I anticipate for much of the year. And so, setting aside my usual bitchery and circumspection, every year we trim the tree and get out my Christmas dishes (yeah, I said it), make the lists and check them twice. And watch Christmas movies, both tried-and-true and newly minted, if they are to be found.
There are limits, of course, as I unsurprisingly tend to prefer my watching schedule peppered with violence, pratfalls and malaise rescued (usually) by the better angels of the human spirit. The recent deluge of Hallmark/Lifetime/Netflix pabulum isn’t really gonna cut it. Frosty can be as hot as hell but is he digging glass out of his bloody feet? I thought not.
Michael Showalter’s (The Baxter, 2005; The Idea of You, 2024) latest may not shoulder its way onto my top however-many list, but it does both service and subvert many/most of the tropes of the new American Christmas canon, and by that standard alone it is worth the 106 minutes of my time it politely demands.
Holiday superlative Claire Clauster (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her dopey, if well-meaning husband Nick (Denis Leary) will, once again, welcome home their adult children for a resplendent suburban Houston Christmas. But as is and will ever be, the family is too caught up in their own mid-tier personal bullshit to notice Mom’s herculean efforts to make goddamn miracles. And so, after an inverted Home-Alone-ing, Claire finds herself far from home and hearth, trying to give herself the gift she actually wants.
Having grown acquainted with Showalter’s work decades ago, with The State, Wet Hot American Summer and Stella as the primary texts, it’s a little disconcerting to have watched him grow into a solid, if kind of invisible, mainstream stalwart. In our youth — his and mine, I guess — he was perhaps the most buffoonish among ingenious troupes of buffoons, a physical comedian nonpareil with no evident sense of self-reverence. Now, though, he frequently brings us solid, occasionally stolid, mid-range crowd-pleasers directed with workmanlike precision and mostly absent the absurdity and cynicism with which we fell in love. It’s an example of learning to grow without growing apart.
Oh. What. Fun. is arguably most subversive in its refusal to subvert, but it does have as its thesis a celebration of the uncelebrated, an ostensible raising-up of the long-suffering, ever-comforting moms, those soldiers of joy whose dedication to the mission is strongest tested this time of year. And so, while it’s not destined to live among the classics in my heavy rotation, it’s sweet and funny and suitably designed enough to spend an evening with. PG13. 106M. PRIME.
IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU. And here we have another, very different story of a harried mother, perhaps not one around which the relations should gather of a holiday’s eve.
Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, of the Safdie/Brownsteins, If I Had Legs details the unraveling of an unnamed protagonist (the credits call her Linda, but I didn’t catch it in context), played by Rose Byrne, charged with caring for an almost entirely unseen elementary-school-aged daughter suffering from some undescribed wasting condition that requires a feeding tube while her mostly unseen husband — some sort of boat captain — phones in from afar to offer little beyond chastisements.
Forced to leave the family’s apartment after an abrupt flood, Linda and child take up residence in a questionable motel, where Mom subsists mostly on bottles of wine and pinner spliffs, drawing ever closer to her own emotional undoing. A therapist herself, she struggles in her relationship with her own mental health provider (played with astounding adroitness by Conan O’Brien) and with her patients, one of whom abandons her baby on Linda’s beleaguered watch.
Like so many A24 offerings, If I Had Legs uses the audio cues and cutting techniques of classic horror to introduce an enveloping atmosphere of dread and unease into what is essentially a domestic drama. But thanks in large part to the always-great Byrne, it is buoyed by occasional flashes of dark humor, perfectly timed outbursts and exclamations that lend both naturalism and elevation to the proceedings. R. 113M. PRIME.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
NOW PLAYING
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Na’vi-on-Na’vi violence in the latest installment of James Cameron’s sci-fi action franchise. PG13. 195M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
DAVID. Animated Old Testament tale about a shepherd who beans a giant with a rock. PG. 115M. BROADWAY.
ELLA MCCAY. Comedy-drama about a newly elected governor (Emma Mackey) with a complicated family. PG13. 115M. BROADWAY.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2. Sequel to the Chuck E. Cheese-esque animatronic horror. PG13. 104M. BROADWAY.
THE HOUSEMAID. Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney in a thriller about weird dynamics with the help. R. 131M. BROADWAY.
THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SEARCH FOR SQUAREPANTS. Your favorite boxy hero takes on the Flying Dutchman’s ghost. PG. 96M. BROADWAY (3D).
WICKED: FOR GOOD. Elphaba and Glinda reunite from opposite sides of the yellow brick tracks to save Oz in the sequel. PG. 137M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
ZOOTOPIA 2. Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman return to voice the rabbit and fox crimefighting duo in the animated comedy adventure. PG. 108M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in An Absence of Abalone.