It wouldn’t be the holiday season without a Christmas comedy in which someone is frustrated, angry, or miserable about Yuletide cheer, crass commercialism, or familial dysfunction.
For Texas matriarch Claire Clauster (Michelle Pfeiffer), it’s the last of those which proves vexing, albeit not as much as the fact that her clan takes for granted her yeoman’s efforts to make this time of year joyous. Nonetheless, there’s little to appreciate about Michael Showalter’s film (December 3, Prime Video), whose you-go-mom spirit is undercut by a mirthless grab bag of bickering, ungratefulness, and betrayal. The charismatic Pfeiffer deserves much, much better than this soggy stocking stuffer.
At a gas station, Claire reprimands a random motorist’s unruly brood by saying that “you really should be nicer to her…because some day, she’s going to be dead.” She feels this woman’s pain because in her home, she’s expected to do all the work without receiving much in the way of thanks from her husband Nick (Denis Leary) and her visiting three kids Channing (Felicity Jones), a writer married to Doug (Jason Schwartzman); Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz), a lesbian who trots out a new girlfriend each December; and Sammy (Dominic Sessa), a coddled layabout who’s smarting from his recent break-up with Mae-bell (Maude Apatow).
Claire decorates her suburban Houston abode in plentiful garland, tinsel, and lights, not only because she likes to but because she’s in a quasi-competition with picture-perfect across-the-street neighbor Jeanne Wang-Wasserman (Joan Chen), whose every smile radiates smugness.
What Claire wants most for Christmas is for her kids to enter her into the Holiday Moms Contest held by her favorite daytime TV show host Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria). Rather than do that, though, they’re wrapped up in their own issues and spend the majority of their waking hours rolling their eyes at Claire for her good spirits and enthusiastic selflessness, such as buying tickets for a live performance of So You’re a Dancer. They’re grown-up brats, and while Oh. What. Fun. intends for them to be merely misguided, they come across as selfish and thankless.
Showalter and co-writer Chandler Baker pile on the usual chaotic-household craziness during Oh. What. Fun.’s opening stanzas, with Doug sighing over having to sleep with his spouse in a twin bed and Claire receiving a monochrome candle from Jeanne and, realizing that it has more wicks than the one she’s giving in return, takes back her gift and heads to the mall for a suitable replacement.
It’s at this point that the film swiftly jumps the rails, having Claire steal a giant bowl from Crate & Barrel and flee security guards, all because she was too impatient to stand in line—a bit of wackiness that resonates as far-fetched and, worse, humorless. That she then chooses to not even give the stolen item to Jeanne further underscores the scene’s slapdash nature, and comes to epitomize the proceedings’ general sloppiness.
Oh. What. Fun.’s characters are a blandly quirky bunch, with Nick struggling to put together a play set for his grandchildren, Sammy singing a morose version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and Channing becoming so exasperated with her mother that she tells her that next year, she’d prefer to skip their annual get-together to go on a ski trip.
Claire is surrounded by narcissistic ingrates, although their unpleasantness is more signified than felt, since Showalter keeps everything as mild as possible. The material has no edge, and that’s most evident during the outing to the dance show, when everyone is so blissfully concerned with themselves that they leave Claire behind, Home Alone-style.
By the time they realize their faux pas and race back to get her, it’s too late—fed up with being ignored and dismissed, Claire has flown the coop.
Like the prior shoplifting escapade (which involved tepidly evading security guards in the parking lot), this turn of events is less wacky than “wacky,” and what follows is even tamer, with the spurned homemaker befriending a cowboy at a diner (he gives her his jacket because it’s snowing and he’s a gentleman) and sharing a motel room with a complete stranger, delivery woman Morgan (Danielle Brooks).
Oh. What. Fun.’s plotting is scattershot and preposterous, but neither of those shortcomings would matter if it were funny. Alas, Showalter does nothing with his out-of-left-field scenarios; the most that comes of Claire and Morgan’s night together, for example, is the latter loudly playing the TV and a sound machine (making whale noises) to go to sleep. In these and other dreary instances, it’s as if the film forgot to write actual jokes.
Left to their own devices, Claire’s family starts fighting—Taylor is mean to Doug because he’s boring, and he rats her out for cheating on her latest paramour—and Sammy strikes up a romance with Jeanne’s daughter Lizzie (Havana Rose Liu), which would be surprising if not for the fact that she does nothing on-screen except give him I’m-interested smiles.
Claire eventually travels to Burbank to crash the taping of Zazzy’s broadcast special and becomes a national celebrity for venting on-air about her family’s jerkiness, leading to a California reunion in which everyone settles their differences and lets Claire know she’s loved and cherished. It’s all a lot of predictable mush, yet what’s tough to swallow isn’t the treacle but the banality. Even for a schmaltzy venture such as this, the action is so devoid of prickly humanity that its uplift feels unearned.
Pfeiffer’s Claire is far too doting, considerate, and all-around charming to be believable as a neglected and put-upon mother, and the actress is hamstrung by a script that cares more about pro-mom speechifying (and easy-bake conflict resolutions) than eliciting laughs that might turn its characters endearing and its climax heartwarming.