Reviews
Oh. What. Fun.
Oh. What. Fun. is not your typical straight-to-streaming holiday film at first glance. Its core message aims to shine a light on the unsung heroes of the festive season, the mums who hold everything together each year with little thanks, barely any rest, and almost no help. Without them many family traditions would crumble. In that sense the film is clearly made for them, and the premise deserves real praise for finally acknowledging that truth.
Sadly that is also where most of the admiration for Oh. What. Fun. comes to an abrupt halt. Much like a Christmas without its true organiser, the film quickly collapses under confused storytelling, grating characters, and painfully forced humour. Even the moments clearly designed to pull at the heartstrings are undercut by awkwardly placed jokes that only encourage eye rolling. The overall experience had me squirming and cringing far more often than it ever had me smiling, that not even the impressively star filled cast can rescue.
Co-written and directed by Michael Showalter (The Idea of You), the film follows Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her family as they gather for their seasonal traditions. As is common with holiday films of this type, not one member of the family resembles anything close to normality. Leading the group is husband and father Nick (Denis Leary), the most predictable version of a lazy partner, contributing little beyond failed attempts at cooking, DIY, and every other tired stereotype imaginable.
Then come the children. Oh, those exhausting and endlessly aggravating children. The eldest, Channing (Felicity Jones), presents herself as a successful author yet clearly carries a mountain of mummy issues about never being the favourite. She is accompanied by her unbearable husband Doug (Jason Schwartzman), who somehow manages to grate in every single scene. Next is the middle child, Taylor (Chloe Grace Moretz), “the cool kid” who seemingly arrives each year with a new girlfriend. Finally there is the youngest, Sammy (Dominic Sessa), who gets dumped in the opening sequence, which throughout the film you may find yourself questioning why didn’t she do that sooner? All this is before even mentioning the Wang-Wasserman family, whose appearance is completely unnecessary and perhaps the most bewildering inclusion of the entire film.
At the heart of the story lies Claire’s longing to be nominated for Zazzy Tims’ (Eva Longoria) holiday award for deserving mothers and to be acknowledged for the countless thankless tasks she has taken on year after year. Tragically she entrusts her children with submitting the nomination, yet in keeping with the film’s core theme, they forget about it entirely. They don’t only overlook the nomination, they leave her behind altogether while they hurry off to a Christmas Eve event that she organised. This becomes the final breaking point, prompting Claire to pack a bag and hit the road to Zazzy’s California studio, forcing her family to manage without her and confront just how much she actually contributes.
When the film focuses on this idea of the unseen figure who keeps a household running, it is at its strongest. These moments carry a genuine sense of empowerment and will undoubtedly resonate with mums, and with anyone who has ever quietly kept everything afloat without recognition. Had the film remained centred on this theme, I’m convinced I would have enjoyed it far more. Unfortunately much of the runtime is devoted to needless tangents that are predictable, derivative, and ultimately a waste of time. Several subplots, such as the odd relationship between Taylor and Doug, feel included simply to pad the length, because there is no convincing narrative purpose for them.
Tonally the film is a complete mess. For long stretches it tries, and spectacularly fails, to be a comedy. It relies heavily on the toilet humour that is typical of many straight-to-streaming releases, and to be blunt, it becomes almost nauseating with its endless stream of jokes that don’t come remotely close to landing. At the same time, the film jumps from shallow silliness to sudden emotional seriousness without any real transition between the two, especially in the final act. What could have been a powerful and moving climax is disappointingly flat and feels entirely unearned. Even then the emotional moment is rushed past before the audience can absorb it, quickly replaced by yet another pointless gag delivered with no sense of timing.
The star studded cast are, for the most part, perfectly fine. There is nothing particularly outstanding in any of the performances, but nothing that could be called outright terrible either. Michelle Pfeiffer is the most memorable simply because she has the largest role, and she handles it well enough. Dominic Sessa is perhaps the only member of the cast who shows any real sense of comedic timing, but even then it is like finding water in a desert, it happens so rarely. At least no one can fairly be accused of phoning it in, because the real problem lies with the material they have been given rather than the actors themselves.
I cannot help feeling deeply disappointed with Oh. What. Fun. I wanted it to be a heartfelt tribute to mums everywhere, something I could watch with my own mother as a way of saying thank you through the medium of film, something that we both adore at Christmas. Yet the frustrating chaos smothering the film’s genuinely lovely core makes that almost impossible. I have to be honest and say this is one to skip this holiday season. You are better off revisiting the classics.
