Holidate Is Fun

Have you ever been vaguely a mid-late 20-something or an early-mid 30-something and it feels like everyone around you is always asking “When are you going to get married?” and “Why haven’t you found someone?” Are you tired of being compared to a younger sibling who lived life “according to plan” better than you? Has it gotten so annoying that you’re willing to consider a platonic friend to fake kiss just to shut your aunt up? Then boot up Netflix because Holidate is the movie for you!

A Netflix movie that’s good? Yeah I know. Maybe they’re onto something or maybe they’re just doing a more expensive version of the Blumhouse thing where you throw spaghetti at the wall until it sticks then claim success.

But this one is actually pretty good. It looks like a Hallmark movie intentionally, while subverting that into something that is very much not a Hallmark movie. It takes a nice big steamy well mannered cheeky dump on those movies, not unlike Recipe For Seduction.

You get F words, dick jokes, sex jokes, cringe embarrassment, drinking, smoking. Not very Hallmark, but still very fun.

Comedy movies are not easy to make. An average comedy is meh. A bad comedy is painful. But a good comedy? Rare and very good.

You’ll know within the first 5-10 minutes if this is the kind of comedy movie for you. They front load a couple of the cruder jokes to set the tone.

The straight play of some of the comedic scenes is great. There’s a few gags that I can still laugh at every time I think about them. Plus the inverting and subverting of the Hallmark movie tropes while also still playing along with them is pretty fun too.

The concept isn’t new, mainly because it’s ripping on your Hallmark movies directly. Two strangers down on their luck with love. They’re both tired of being single for the holidays mostly because they’re sick of the family pressure that comes with it. They wackily end up spending time together and continuously running into each other. It’s all platonic friendship until oopsie! FEELINGS! Oh my gosh, how will they ever deal with their feelings for each other?

Sometimes it’s nice to watch a short-ish throwaway rom-com. There is chemistry between the leads to make you care just enough. There’s nothing wrong with junk food movies. No new ground is broken, but that doesn’t matter. You know what you’re watching and how it’s going to end, but it gets there and amuses along the way.

By no means is this a timeless holiday classic. You’re not replacing Home Alone on your watch calendar. But if you’re looking for something aimed at your ambiguously defined “millennial” folks who like to drink and party to feel better, but in an innocent way, then it’s a fun movie to mix in.

Plus, the concept of this sort of relationship sometimes really speaks to me as a single thirty-something. Even attending a backyard fire or a barbecue among friends at the park brings up the “so why aren’t you seeing anyone?”, “when are you gonna find someone?”, and “you’re getting older, you should get married soon!” things. Like I don’t know! If I had those answers I wouldn’t be single and wouldn’t have to put up with your questions, would I? Living through that as these characters do makes them feel real to me.

I might watch it again. I might not. But I’m glad I did as for 90 minutes I had a good time laughing at the characters, laughing at myself and drinking some candy cane hot chocolate with a bit of adult happy juice.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

Yesterday: Music, Love and Happiness

Yesterday is a really nice movie. It is nice to mix in a light, cheeky film amongst the serious dramas, R rated films and big ass action movies. There will always be a place for lighthearted fun and it will always be a bonus when it comes as an enjoyable celebration of music, happiness and love.

The premise is a great one, and your fulfillment on the execution will vary. I can see how someone would be underwhelmed by it. It doesn’t dive too deep into the butterfly effect of what would happen, hypothetically, if The Beatles never existed and how that would play out in a larger pop culture sense. It isn’t like without The Beatles that hair metal, grunge and nu-metal never existed. Jack isn’t going to be dying under the weight of guilt for plagiarizing these songs to the point he ends the film dying of a heroin overdose in a motel bathtub. It’s just a world without The Beatles. Maybe they got erased by Thanos. Who knows?

It’s a light fun rom-com that is funny and touching, so your execution of the premise is going to be in alignment with that or you get left with a mess tonally.

That isn’t to say the movie is empty calories. They do well on the premise. They take it seriously without it being too serious and having the whole movie be cotton candy and rainbows.

A nice directorial style gives it some extra flavour. Definitely some of those kinds of scenes where you can tell Danny Boyle meticulously planned from the second he thought of it to getting it to execution and to the edit. Its nice to see directors be able to flex their creativity with style and meaning. Its important to the art of directing to get those flexes. A nice eye-gasm.

The movie delivers on a few nice alternate universe shenanigans. If The Beatles are gone, then what else is missing? Did Pokemon ever exist? Did The Rock stick in the CFL and never become a pro wrestling icon and mega movie star? Did politicians find some morality? Makes you wonder what else is missing.

The story is basic but that isn’t a problem. I can’t emphasize this enough. It’s a benefit in my eyes. It’s a feel good movie. It doesn’t do anything dumb. It’s a bit silly, and it’s meant to be. It’s a rom-com, but it doesn’t make you want to gag. It tells a simple story but an effective one that has a lesson to it. When a simple message is told effectively it is nevertheless uplifting anyway.

Without the cast however, this movie probably would come up short. The cast is great and you find yourself engaged by their chemistry. When characters work so well together and give such strong performances it raises the material. Himesh Patel is excellent as the lead, Jack, and his chemistry with Lily James as Ellie is so charming that it feels real.

It was also nice to see someone of a different race and “normal looking” in the lead. He does a great job being a schlub and you’re rooting for him. Just adds a bit of spice to the story so it isn’t just another “white guy with an acoustic guitar wants to get famous” thing as everyone I think knows that guy and wants to vomit when they think of him.

Himesh Patel is also actually singing the songs. He’s actually the one playing the guitar. And he’s actually the one playing piano. No trickery involved. Give the man a standing ovation.

The supporting cast does their job well. Joel Fry is a fun burnout friend, Jack’s other friends feel like real people, and his parents are cute and hilarious. Ed Sheeran isn’t obnoxious as celebrities playing themselves can often be.

The comedy in the movie is great and feels a lot like how friends rib each other. Jokes are best in these situations when they feel like the real kind of barbs you toss between friends. While some of the satire is clearly satire, at the same time it also clearly isn’t satire. Or at the least, probably not quite as satirical as someone more naïve to the corporate workings of the entertainment industry would believe.

Kate McKinnon is probably the most “unrealistic” character in the film and comes across as if a parody cranked up to 11. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she isn’t as much a parody as she seems. The corporate management and marketing side of the music industry is pretty ruthless and gross. Underneath all the humour paint is undoubtedly how every musician feels they are valued and treated by the suits and ties up in the board room.

The movie itself is pretty much the perfect length as well. It is paced well so it doesn’t drag. Good music in a film makes things good too, and none of the songs last too long. The pops of music always do a good job to pick you up, and when at the climax it gives it and goes. Boom done, here’s your 2 minute epilogue. Bravo.

More movies need to learn the lessons of brevity.

Its so weird how everyone can acknowledge how great the songs of The Beatles are, but for most people you can fall off and forget about them without something to jog your memory and stick them back in.

Yesterday is a charming movie. It isn’t an all-time classic, but not everything has to be. That’s something nice about films like this and Stuber. They’re great ways to spend a down evening that don’t require much/any knowledge prior, keep you engaged through their story, and then leave you in a good place to have some fun conversations about the film. That’s fun.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.