Oh. What. Fun. Review: Michelle Pfeiffer in Michael Showalters Generic Holiday Ode to Underappreciated Moms

Say this for Amazon’s Oh. What. Fun.: Until its beleaguered protagonist, Claire Clauster (Michelle Pfeiffer), grumbles “Where are the holiday movies about moms?” it really hadn’t occurred to me that most of the Christmas classics are about men.

There are mothers and sisters and wives and girlfriends in It’s a Wonderful Life or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or Elf, sure, but they’re neither the heroes, nor the point — despite the fact that in reality, as this film emphatically points out, it’s so often women who do the work that Santa gets all the credit for.

So, yes: Consider me fully persuaded that it’s high time for Hollywood to give these ladies their due. I’m less convinced, though, that Oh. What. Fun. is the thank-you note they deserve. A forgettable blend of unearned saccharinity and unacknowledged sourness, the Michael Showalter-directed dramedy capably proves that Mom is the true angel of the season but falls well short of proving that Christmas is worth all her fussing in the first place.

Not that Claire — apparently a Houston homemaker, though it’s hard to be sure since the movie never bothers to explain how she and her amiably clueless husband (Denis Leary) are able to afford their extremely nice house — would ever question her commitment. She lives to host Christmas for her three adult children — harried firstborn Channing (Felicity Jones), flaky middle child Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) and aimless youngest son Sammy (Dominic Sessa) — even if that means doing all the cooking and cleaning and driving halfway across town to stock up on their favorite treats.

The only thing she asks in return is that they nominate her for the Holiday Mom contest, put on by her favorite daytime host (Eva Longoria as Zazzy). When they ignore her not-so-subtle hints, she grits her teeth and tries to make the best of it anyway. It’s not until they accidentally ditch her en route to a concert — which she bought all the tickets for, natch — that she decides she’s had enough. Without so much as a note, she drives off on her own adventure, leaving the rest of the Clausters to fend for themselves.

The biggest draw for a prospective viewer will undoubtedly be the cast, which also includes Jason Schwartzman as Channing’s dorky but well-meaning husband, Joan Chen as the clan’s snooty neighbor, Danielle Brooks in a small cameo as a delivery driver and more. Their collective star power, combined with the sets’ warm lighting and luxe décor, gives Oh. What. Fun. a high-gloss sheen, promising a product that’s a cut above the usual cheapo holiday junk.

Without exception, however, they’re all woefully underserved by a bland script (written by Showalter and Chandler Baker, based on Baker’s short story) that assigns most of them maybe one personality trait apiece. Pfeiffer, who as the lead has the most meat to work with, turns in a solid performance, elevated by grace notes like the way she swallows Claire’s disappointments. But in its determination to make Claire an Everymom, Oh. What. Fun. fails to give her any complex or unique interiority.

Nor does this cast share the sort of chemistry that might sell the Clausters as a cohesive family unit. Their relationships lack specificity; in lieu of histories or wounds or inside jokes between them, they’re built around threadbare tropes like “clueless sitcom dad” or “responsible eldest daughter.” When emotions boil over during one tense dinner, I was only surprised to discover that any of these people harbored strong feelings about each other at all.

What Oh. What. Fun. is able to depict with lived-in specificity is the list of grievances experienced by Claire and people like her. Mostly, they are hard to argue with. There is a lot of cultural pressure on mothers to make the Yuletide magical, and Claire probably is right that most of us could stand to be more forthcoming with “those three little words that mean so much to moms” — not “I love you,” but “Can I help?” This movie feels made with the purpose of getting overburdened parents to nod furiously in commiseration, and I imagine it’ll achieve that goal easily.

But there’s a point at which the sheer volume of complaints crosses over from relatable to depressing. In this universe, not even a self-described “boss bitch” like the Oprah-esque Zazzy can get her husband to bring a gift more thoughtful than upholstery cleaner (though it is pretty funny that another of her Christmas horror stories involves her daughter making her pancakes — which would seem a sweet gesture, only “I hate pancakes and she knows that”).

At the same time, the film offers scant sense of the rewards that might make all these sacrifices worthwhile for the Claires of the world. It’s as if the film takes for granted that women are unfailingly devoted to their husbands and children, and so does not bother wondering what they get out of these relationships. On the flip side, it also presumes it’s of utmost importance that Christmas look or feel a certain way, but offers little evidence that any of the Clausters — up to and including Channing’s young kids, the only actual children onscreen — care very much about the decorations or meals or presents Claire breaks her back to make perfect.

After a while, you start to wonder if maybe Claire and the various Clausters wouldn’t be better apart after all. You start to question if Claire is a self-made martyr or if her family are a grotesquely inconsiderate bunch, or if it’s both. You might even get to asking whether the problem isn’t overworked moms or ungrateful families but the entire institution of the nuclear family, which evidently forces the people trapped within it to go through the motions of traditions that bring them more stress than joy.

Which could be an interesting direction to go, if Oh. What. Fun. had the imagination or the nerve to go there. It does not. Inevitably, Claire and her family are reunited under a flurry of thank yous and sorrys; predictably, the whole thing ends on a coda that reassures us everyone has come out the other side more joyful, more loving, more appreciative and appreciated.

It’s a happy ending, technically, but not one with enough thought or feeling behind it to really warm the heart. As a gift for Mom, Oh. What. Fun. is the equivalent of a fancy candle snapped up at the last minute: expensive-looking and tasteful, wholly unobjectionable and disappointingly generic.