Oh. What. Fun. Review: Michelle Pfeiffer's Christmas Movie Has Charm But No Spark

I usually avoid the new annual Christmas movies like the plague, but every once in a while, I roll the dice on something that seems passable either due to its appealing cast or an amusingly scathing tone toward the overrated holiday spirit. Anything that's willing to rise above the typically saccharine Hallmark-quality trash studios want to feed us when December comes around. Prime Video's "Oh. What. Fun." seemed to fit one of those criteria this year.

The movie offers a decent ensemble, led by a charming Michelle Pfeiffer and Denis Leary as a married couple, who expect their eccentric and spoiled children (played by Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Dominic Sessa) to arrive for the holiday and bring their latest problems with them, just like they do every year. If you've seen 2019's "The Moodys" (a criminally underrated Christmas show also featuring Leary as the patriarch) that boasts a similar premise in its first season, you know why that can be a ton of fun.

But, even though both Leary and Pfeiffer have a decent track record with Christmas flicks (1994's "The Ref" for the former and 1992's "Batman Returns" for the latter, of course), they can't save Michael Showalter's film from ending up as another underwhelming, manufactured, and cliched Christmas movie. And that's particularly frustrating because every ingredient — relatable family banter, obnoxious neighbors, sweet encounters with strangers, and an approach celebrating the unsung heroes of the holiday — is there to carry "Oh. What. Fun" to what it aims to be: a good, charming, and effortlessly entertaining pastime to put on after eating yourself into a food coma on Christmas Eve.

We begin with Michelle Pfeiffer's matriarch's voiceover, telling us how under appreciated every mother is during Christmastime. They're the ones who run themselves ragged by cooking, buying presents, and making sure the house is nice, clean, and decorated by the time the kids and their significant others arrive to celebrate together. This time, it's a snowless Christmas in the wealthy Texas neighborhood where Claire (Pfeiffer) and Nick (Denis Leary) are getting ready to be visited by their three children, who each are a handful on their own. Their oldest, Channing (Felicity Jones), is the most mature, already having her own family with a feeble but lovable weirdo husband (Jason Schwartzman) and two kids. Taylor (Chloe Grace Moretz) is the sort of black sheep of the family, being effortlessly cool and gay with a love addiction issue; she brings a different girl around every year, and claims she is the love of her life. Meanwhile, Sammy (Dominic Sessa), the only son, is supposed to finally introduce his first serious girlfriend, who dumps him right before the big day.

Since all of them are pretty caught up in their own little worlds, they forget to submit Claire to the annual Mom Competition in her favorite TV show — The Zazzy Tims, hosted by Eva Longoria's Zazzy — despite several email and text reminders. It's the one gift that Claire truly wants this Christmas, and she's pretty heartbroken about not getting it. The last straw, however, comes when the entire family forgets and leaves her home en route to the annual dance show they always see on Christmas. It's a kind of reverse homage to "Home Alone" that feels forced and implausible, given that Claire is the one who keeps reminding the bunch about the event. Still, she's so upset that she basically cancels Christmas, packs a bag, and hits the road to at least see Zazzy's show live, even if she can't be a part of it. On her way, she stumbles into a few strangers, gets her car towed by accident, and eventually enters the competition by mistake.

All of these chaotic and unlikely plot points provide ample opportunities for some funny bits among this dysfunctional family, but they can never overcome feeling entirely contrived and manufactured. That could be overlooked, but sadly, the jokes and overall humor supplied by Chandler Baker and Michael Showalter's script are more misses than hits. The banter and the slapstick-y moments simply fall flat due to being half-baked, no matter how hard the more than capable actors attempt to salvage them. There are some slightly comical moments (Leary as a desperate husband/grandfather and Schwartzman as a bumbling idiot in particular), but most of the efforts here are rather cringeworthy than anything worth praising. It's really a shame since everyone is totally game to make a fool out of themselves for the sake of entertainment, but the inept screenplay lets them down in doing so.

"Oh. What. Fun" also draws up a rather novel and heart-warming theme — especially in the second half, where Claire's plotline is almost entirely separated from her family's — in celebrating the mothers who often singlehandedly organize and run Christmas without getting due credit for it. But apart from some odd and unearned pats on the back from Eva Longoria's bossy show host, Michael Showalter completely botches this uplifting idea and fails to pay respect to those moms in any meaningful way. Instead, he settles for a run-of-the-mill happy ending without properly resolving most of the conflicts he built up initially, even if the characters didn't earn any of it. A prime example of lazy writing to cater to audiences who most likely put this movie on as background noise while they'd rather do anything else than pay attention to it.

If that's the only goal of "Oh. What. Fun," Showalter certainly succeeds in accomplishing it since his movie is as mediocre as they come, undeserving of more than a half-hearted watch, unfortunately. I think that's too bad, given its talented cast and initial ambitions in delivering something slightly out of the ordinary in a genre that barely veers off the tedious and traditional path in favor of creating something unexpectedly delightful. To put it simply: it's just another Christmas flick with an artificial heart — if it even has one at all.

"Oh. What. Fun." lands on Prime Video on December 3.