★½ (1½ out of 4)
Have you noticed that most Christmas comedies fall into these categories: Lame. Lamer. Lamest. Each season it’s as if filmmakers can’t work up the energy and enthusiasm to even fake holiday cheer. Things go wrong fast with Prime Video’s “Oh. What. Fun.” right from the three-word title with those annoying periods in between. I kept thinking, Oh. What. Crap. It’s the lamest.
At least Michelle Pfeiffer is starring in it, right? She’s always a plus. OK, maybe not in “Grease 2.” Anyway, pretty early in this botch job I could swear Pfeiffer’s lips were forming the words: “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.” Michelle, I feel your pain. Not because this slice of moldy fruitcake is that awful. It’s just flat, stilted, lazy and so stretched out with Xmas clichés that you want to scream.
Director Max Showalter (“The Big Sick”) has cobbled together a script with Chandler Baker (whose short story this film is based on) with Pfeiffer as Claire Clauser (get it, CLAUSer), a wife, mother and grandmother with white people problems. Lots of them. She’s opened her decorative holiday home in Texas for a clown car of dysfunction known as her family.
It’s just flat, stilted, lazy and so stretched out with Xmas clichés that you want to scream.
Among the adult brats are her mystery writer daughter Channing (Felicity Jones, looking stuck), along with Channing’s husband Doug (Jason Schwartzman, looking more stuck) and their two kids, played by Rafaella Karnaby and Drake Shehan.
Then there’s the perpetually adrift son Sammy (Dominic Sessa, the gangly charmer from “The Holdovers,” a much better Christmas movie). He’s followed by daughter Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz), a born rebel who brings home a different same-sex lover every Christmas. This year’s edition is Donna (Devery Jacobs), who catches on quick that she’s one in a long, long line
Amid all the chaos comes Claire’s husband Nick (a nothing role that falls to overqualified Denis Leary) who decides to give a speech in honor of the unappreciated. Claire understandably thinks it’s about her, but no. Nick is talking about St. Nick and he’s changed into a Santa suit that tells us all we need to know about him.
The plot thickens and congeals when Claire decides to dump the whole family and drive off to enter herself in nationwide TV competition, hosted by Zazzy Tims (a reliably lively Eva Longoria), to pick the most unappreciated mom. Claire has told literally everyone that she longs to be on that show. No one listens. Really? That happens? Indeed it does. You’ll never hear me complain about a movie that honors mothers (shoutout to you, Mom), but this one just spins its wheels without coming up with any workable variations on the theme.
Of the many blunders “Oh. What. Fun.” makes on its long journey to global memory fog is name checking other Christmas films (with clips yet) such as “Elf,” “Home Alone,” “A Christmas Story,” “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “The Polar Express” (How did that dud get in here?)
Claire condemns these classics for being insultingly male centric. Maybe so, but they’re way better than this soft-serve Valentine to motherhood that never took the time to make something worthy of its subject. Moms deserve the love. “Oh. What. Fun.” Not. So. Much.