[fannish/bad movie night] Happiest Season

[hermionesviolin]

thedeadparrot: "Guess what? Tuesday is December 1 and we have neverending list of bad Christmas movies that we can watch. Anyway, we're starting off with lesbian Kristen Stewart, which I have heard bad things about, but you know what? Let's just enjoy the process of yelling at it a lot."

So, we (hate)watched Happiest Season -- the KStew f/f Christmas "romcom" on Hulu.

I had read some stuff on the Internet (e.g., "Yeah, watching Happiest Season may be legitimately traumatizing for a lot of queer viewers, and I don’t really recommend it! Absolutely not the fluffy holiday romcom it’s being marketed as. The cast did what they could, but the script wasn’t up to the themes it’s working through." -Kay Taylor Rea on Twitter) that made me not wanna watch it, and then my partner watched it and hated it.  But yelling at it with friends felt like an acceptable way to watch it.

I'm not super genre-savvy about Hallmark movie sort of movies, but it definitely felt like it was doing a lot of that.  But it could have done that without so much of the terrible stuff. [On the subject of which: the forced outing didn't hit me hard, but I recognize it's important to include as a content note/warning for queer viewers.]

We could have actually seen any indication that Harper and Abby really love each other. We could have dropped the whole, "Harper pressures Abby to do stuff she doesn't want," bit from the beginning that was supposed to be ~romantic or whatever.

We could have had the, "Abby goes home with Harper for the holidays, but they pretend to not be a couple," plotline with both of them consenting to it! Hijinks can still ensue!

Harper's family could have been less Incredibly Terrible -- which would have made the dramatic pivot to a happy ending feel slightly more believable. (Someone at movie night quipped, "tell your secrets and take a nap," and we agreed that it's a critical FIRST STEP, but that everyone in this movie needs so much therapy, there's no way that dramatic of a pivot could have happened that night/the next morning. And honestly, even the "One Year Later" tag needed an "After SO MUCH Therapy" subtitle.)

Like, the way Harper's mom treats both Abby and Jane is so over-the-top. She can be shitty without having to be That Bad. And Sloane's competitiveness at the ice skating rink didn't need to involve literally fucking up bystanders and not caring about it.

Riley could have been Harper's ex-secret-girlfriend without yet another, "Wow, Harper behaved terribly, and lied to Abby about it."

The mall cop scene was over-the-top and completely unnecessary.

We could have dropped the entire "if the NSA can do it, so can I" phone tracking plotline (which wasn't even treated like it was that creepy!).

While they were watching the movie, my partner said, "The role of Elizabeth in this movie is played by the Gay Best Friend." And yes, I had seen lots of quotes of John saying true things in a bitchy way. ("Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass." -Cordelia Chase, HBIC) But when I actually watched the movie, I didn't actually like John that much. He's very self-centered, and I was willing to let him be the catty, self-centered Gay Best Friend TM, but he didn't feel like "me" in the way I had hoped from Thom's comment. When he shows up at the house and Dramatically leans in to being [mis]taken for Abby's ex-boyfriend, I said, "That almost makes up for the fish." And then he facilitates Harper winning Abby back! 😭😠 Even though he had been so aggressive about so much of this being a bad idea. That was maybe the point at which he really started to exist just for moving-the-plot-along reasons. His previous flaws were character-consistent, but him (we assume) telling Harper to come find them at the gas station was totally OOC.

Also, it feels totally implausible that he would be at all supportive of nerd!Jane (who, by the way, I was prepared to love thanks to the Internet, but she never did it for me). Oh, and while I'm nitpicking about Jane, why is "she didn't stop biting in preschool" the thing that caused her parents to give up on her? Of all the things you could have picked for this line, you picked something that feels so incredibly out-of-character. Jane, who is so warm, and seems completely unaware of how much everyone else dislikes/doesn't value her... That Jane, wouldn't stop biting in preschool?

Also, I get why, for narrative reasons, almost no one has any real friends.* But John is literally the only person Abby reaches out to about what's happening? Even though he's clearly only middling engaging with her? Get some better/additional friends, Abby! Love yourself! Though, okay, yes, the fact that she stays with Harper suggests that she has some issues with not valuing herself enough :(

* And yes, I know it's an improvement that there are 2 whole queer characters in this film -- who are real characters even -- in addition to our 2 protagonists. The two people who are supportive of Abby are other queers!

Possibly the best thing I've read on this film was:

But I find the widespread insistence that _Happiest Season_ is a charming, bubbly, feel-good romp a little jarring, when so much of it — the _heart_ of it — is really about trauma and gay shame. [...] 

[...] I did want to swoon, to feel blissfully transported into a holiday wonderland where wacky hijinks ensue but everything is ultimately OK in the end. Instead, I was left reflecting upon how often queer people, traumatized themselves, can end up seriously hurting their partners. How the quest for assimilation into straight families and polite upper-middle-class society can limit and diminish us. [...] 

Which is all to say: I was bummed out! And that’s not how I want to feel after watching a rom-com, especially from queer makers and performers I love and respect.

-Shannon Keating, BuzzFeedNews, "The New Kristen Stewart Lesbian Rom-Com Is Kind Of A Bummer"