A Merry Friggin’ Christmas
It’s almost impossible to make a Christmas movie nowadays that isn’t painfully cloying and predictable, yet still genuine. Saccharine emotions are the order of the day for holiday films, and you have to just accept that and hope for the best. That’s where story and cast come in, and thankfully, “A Merry Friggin’ Christmas” excels with both to make it’s story of a father trying to make sure his son can believe in the magic of the season for one, more year palpable and touching.
Working from a screenplay by first timer Michael Brown, director Tristram Shapeero’s film stars Joel McHale (from TV’s “Community,” of which Shapeero is a veteran) as Boyd Mitchler, a husband and father who had a difficult realization when he was a kid, and his father, Mitch (the late Robin Williams), found him under the Christmas tree while putting away presents. The cover was blown– Santa didn’t exist, and Mitch did nothing to try and hide the truth. Rather than keep the spirit alive for one more year, he just told the truth, and Boyd has been bitter about it ever since, and tries to overcompensate for his father’s alcoholic ways. Now, Boyd is grown, and while his daughter, Vera (Bebe Wood), knows the truth, his son, Douglas (Pierce Gagnon), still believes in Santa. When Boyd and family (including his wife, Luann, played by Lauren Graham) have to make an impromptu trip home to Wisconsin for Christmas because his brother, Nelson (Clark Duke), is having his son baptized on Christmas Eve, Boyd has to improvise, and drive back to Chicago after Douglas’s presents were left home. A blown engine means an 8-hour trip with his father, where old tensions could derail everything.
You can probably guess where all of this is headed, and if that bothers you, then this film is probably not for you. That’s a shame, though, because Shapeero has a sharp hand with high concept lunacy blended with wit and heart, as he’s shown often on “Community” over the years. The big reason the film works is because of the comedic talents on-screen, starting with McHale and Williams, the latter of whom has a boundless energy, even in a more subdued role, with other good roles for Graham, Duke, Candice Bergen as Williams’s wife, and Oliver Platt as a “hobo Santa” who plays a crucial role in whether it’s a merry Christmas for the Mitchler family or not. Predictable? In a way, very much so, but in how it gets to it’s inevitable end, it’s too devious to get there in an obvious way.
