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Theres a truly horrid Christmas movie I watch every year called12 Dates of Christmas.
To say its agoodfilm would be to tell a lie.
But still, most years, I return to it.
It weighed on my mind while watching Clea DuvallsHappiest Season.
(Warning: spoilers ahead.)
This, as you might expect, does not go so well.
Obviously, you know roughly how this is all going to end.
Cue the Tegan and Sara original song and fade to black.
The result is a very sweet movie with high rewatch potential.
But still, I wanted so much more fromHappiest Season.
I wanted a movie that didnt feel trapped in 2007.
Because Christmas movies with straight plots are allowed to be bad.
Theyre allowed to be lame.
Theyre allowed to have narratives that revolve around things like the Mrs. (The Santa Clause 2.
Yes, really.)
What it lacks is the same Hollywood treatment.
The final scenes are surprisingly tender, and it concludes without ever centering whiteness in that typical holiday-movie way.
She looked at me, perplexed, and said, Well …Love Actually.
I think thats where a movie likeHappiest Seasongets set up to fail.
Yet despite it shortcomings, this really is the first mainstream gay Christmas movie to hit the market.
For it to not miss on any level lest this be the only Christmas crumb queer people ever get.
For that to be even remotely possible, though, queer people would have to be a monolith.
Which we clearly are not.
Its sort of the whole point.
Thats what you expect, and even want, from a movie like that.
We dont necessarily needHappiest Seasonto be better so much as we need a hundred more movies just like it.
For now, its a start, even if its nowhere near enough.
But, really, no single Christmas story could be.
Even my beloved12 Datesneeded a dozen tries to get it right.
