'Last Christmas', a film review.

It has been a while since my last film review, let's revise that. I recently watched the 2019 film 'Last Christmas' for the first time. My gosh, what an infuriating, saccharine soaked film, let's go!

The film poster for 'Last Christmas'. Credit: IMDB

So, Emilia Clarke is the main character, alongside Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding and Dame Emma Thompson. I will try keep the spoilers to a minimum for anyone who hasn't yet watched this film.

The film starts in Yugoslavia in 1999 (someone didn't do their research) inwhich we see Kate (Emilia) singing in a choir whilst watched by her family. It later transpires that the family escaped Yugoslavia to escape the Balkan Wars and settled in London.

The film then catapults forward and we see Kate, now a grown lady couch surfing in London and working as an Elf in a year round Christmas store ran by 'Santa' (Michelle Yeoh) whilst attempting to have a singing career and recovering from heart surgery. Alongside this, she constantly makes terrible decisions and appears to be filled with self pity, whilst simultaneously burning bridges with friends who are trying to help her. I sound heartless I know, but this character is truly irritating and I feel bad for her boss who still keeps her on out of respect for when Kate wasn't a complete hindrance.

After drunkenly burning another bridge with a friend, Kate meets 'Tom' (Henry Golding) and immediately presumes he is coming onto her and puts him off. Eventually, they keep bumping into each other and Tom shows her a different side to London and of course Kate falls for him and starts to become a better person, a classic situation.

This may all sound fine and quite normal for a Christmas film, so I will now introduce you to the most embarrassing element, 'Petra' (Emma Thompson). Petra is Kate's mother and there is definitely some mother/daughter tension and general family trauma.

However, this isn't the issue, the problem is Emma Thompson putting on a truly appalling Croatian accent. My jaw dropped when 'Petra' started talking and I was horrified to later learn that Emma Thompson was ONE OF THE WRITERS for this film, so knew full well what she was doing and the risk, but continued anyway.

What irritates me is that they sensibly cast a Croatian actor (Boris Isakovic) as Ivan (Kate's father) but decided that instead Emma Thompson should be Petra. I imagine it was mostly due to branding (Emma Thompson of course, was in Love Actually), getting Producers interested and egos but blimey.

Alongside all of this, there are also scenes involving a homeless shelter and one particular moment especially irritated me. Kate ends up popping into the shelter to look for Tom (he volunteers there) and several of the homeless visitors were portrayed in a frankly rude manner. The homeless are frequently portrayed in a negative manner in the media and it made me sad to see a Christmas film also doing this.

Kate finally reaches her lowest point after outing her sister as gay, angering her entire family (stupid idea when you have essentially moved back home after running out of friends sofas to sleep on) and causing her workplace to be broken into. Towards the end of the film, Kate does do something helpful (shocker)and finally starts to make amends.

The twist is fairly basic and I have to confess, we worked it out before the ending.

To conclude, I do not recommend this film, it is frankly irritating and filled with unnecessary moments and bad decisions. I enjoy a bad film and was intrigued to see a Christmas romantic comedy out of curiosity, but there is a limit and this film has gone over it.