“Last Christmas” Movie Review
“Last Christmas,” released on Nov. 8, seemed to be another rom-com holiday-season movie. It measured up to those standards, but it also had a few unseen events that put a twist on the definition of a romantic comedy.
The movie starts in Yugoslavia with Kate, played by Emilia Clarke, as a young girl in a church choir. Her family is watching in admiration as she sings her solo; it is obvious that singing is her passion. From there, it seemed that her family life was going to be easily predictable.
Fast forward 20 years later, roles had been reversed. She is living in London, working at a quirky version of The Christmas Tree Shoppe, one could say. Her sister is a successful lawyer, who has her life all together. She seems to be in conflict with her family and decides to couch surf night after night to not deal with her family. Once she meets Tom, played by Henry Goulding, her life seems to take a turn for the better.
It is revealed in the movie that Kate was quite ill a year before she met Tom and this caused her to be driven away from her family as well. Her big secret that she doesn’t reveal to many people was that she had a heart transplant and explained that she didn’t feel like herself; she explained that it felt like a part of her had been taken away that she hadn’t been able to get back.
Kate’s family is like any other family, one that has relatable dysfunction. She had a sister she didn’t get along with well, her parents’ marriage didn’t seem to be going as smoothly as it once did, yet that’s what makes this family so relatable.
It was heart-warming to see the evolution that her family went through from start to finish. In the beginning of the movie, Kate seemed to be in an unsure state of who she was and what she was doing with her life. By the end of the movie she was able to find herself and her purpose, with the help of her new friend Tom
Director, Paul Feig (the previous director of “Bridesmaids”), chose a diverse but great cast for the film. Even though Kate identifies as a young British woman, her family being from Yugoslavia gave more depth to her as a person as the viewer got to learn about their roots. This showed that people are from all different walks of life and are much more than what meets the eye.
Additionally, Golding identifies as Malaysian-English, and is known for his role as Nick Young in “Crazy Rich Asians.”
The movie was a feel-good type of romantic comedy, though part of the movie was extremely unrealistic. It changed the whole plot of the movie and truly could make one rethink the entire movie, trying to put the pieces together. It is hard for a movie like this to see failure due to the amount of talent in the film, but there could have been other ways to end the film. Overall, the movie did have its positive attributes and it brought up different types of motions.
Rating: 3/5
Emily Mugno is a senior majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, email esm6@psu.edu.
