Happiest Season

Directed by Clea DuVall, Happiest Season follows Mackenzie Davis’ Harper as she decides to bring her girlfriend (Kristen Stewart’s Abby) to her family’s Christmas gathering – with complications ensuing after Harper reveals to Abby that she hasn’t told her family that they’re dating (or even that she’s gay). It’s a well-worn premise that’s employed to sporadically watchable yet predominantly underwhelming effect by DuVall, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Mary Holland, delivers an almost relentlessly bland and generic romcom that’s overflowing with eye-rollingly familiar elements – with, especially, the growing rift between Davis and Stewart’s respective characters handled with all the freshness of a garden-variety Hallmark movie. It is, as such, increasingly difficult to work up any real interest in or enthusiasm for the characters’ ongoing exploits, and although Davis and Stewart possess a reasonable amount of chemistry together, Happiest Season‘s hackneyed approach to their relationship makes it more and more difficult to actually care about whether or not they stay together (ie much of Harper’s inconsistent, inconceivable mid-movie actions exist seemingly only to move the hackneyed plot forward). The end result is a mostly ineffective romantic comedy that squanders an assortment of personable performances, and it’s clear, ultimately, that Happiest Season is entirely unable to pack the heartwarming punch for which DuVall is obviously (and aggressively) striving.

** out of ****