"Mr. Pants is here, Mr. Pants would disapprove."
-Jenny
Okay i'm not going to lie and pretend that i was very excited to see this movie, i mean it got some decent buzz back in the beginning of the year at the "Sundance Film Festival" but after that i was basically forgotten. This is from the same guy who directed last year's Drinking Buddies, a pretty good movie that's probably regarded as one of 2013's best independent films. Though Swanberg's(the director) last picture was surprisingly decent as i said i still just couldn't be bumped to see this one even though it had decent critic love, i mean it's hard to get excited for something that has no publicity and the marketing that it has is trash, i mean that has to be one of the worst looking posters i have seen and the sappy name Happy Christmas didn't help either.
Happy Christmas is Directed by Joe Swanberg and it stars Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham and Joe Swanberg. "Irresponsible 20-something Jenny arrives in Chicago to live with her older brother Jeff, a young film-maker living a happy existence with his novelist wife Kelly and their two-year-old son. Jenny's arrival shakes up their quiet domesticity as she and her friend Carson instigate an evolution in Kelly's life and career. Meanwhile, Jenny strikes up a rocky relationship with the family's baby sitter- cum- pot dealer."
Well thankfully Happy Christmas is not as terrible or out of place as it's marketing, Jesus that poster is just bad, but it's still far from being anything great, this is one of those pictures that's a good time but ultimately is unmemorable and i will have forgotten this one by the end of the week(probably being a little bit generous).
Drinking Buddies was one of last year's most talked about independent films, it was up there with something like Frances Ha in terms of talk but the fact is that i now realize that after having been released for over 90 days the movie only grossed a disgustingly low 343.000. dollars. An independent picture that was such a success critically and talked about only earned that! That's explains the why Joe Swanberg, wasn't able to move to something bigger because this film's budget has to be much lower than his previous work. The budget must have been really but really small, you can see that by it's run-time and by it's technical quality that's rather unimpressive.
But for such a small budgeted, little and limited picture Joe Swanberg is still able to offer it's audience something that's far from being terrible, by all means, Happy Christmas is never dramatically powerful and to say the truth there are not a lot of legitimate laughs in here but it's a film that's always able to be entertaining and it manages to keep a smile on our faces for the grand majority of it's run-time.
Happy Christmas is a movie that ultimately never surprises it's audience and it never really stands out but it also doesn't let you down. Again it's not ever that funny but it's always at least amusing, the performers here are lovable and real and that's probably the film's biggest stand out, the fact that it manages to sell these characters as real people, and because they are real people, we oddly seem to relate to them and be engaged by their stories and about what they have to say, though they at times seem short on things that they have to say.
Again you wont find anything memorable nor one of the year's best pictures in this movie, but Happy Christmas is certainly an entertaining and amusing enough of a watch, you wont regret if you see it i think, it's a movie that's easy to follow during it's short 80 minutes run-time but unfortunately also easy to forget.
Rating.C
-Jenny
Okay i'm not going to lie and pretend that i was very excited to see this movie, i mean it got some decent buzz back in the beginning of the year at the "Sundance Film Festival" but after that i was basically forgotten. This is from the same guy who directed last year's Drinking Buddies, a pretty good movie that's probably regarded as one of 2013's best independent films. Though Swanberg's(the director) last picture was surprisingly decent as i said i still just couldn't be bumped to see this one even though it had decent critic love, i mean it's hard to get excited for something that has no publicity and the marketing that it has is trash, i mean that has to be one of the worst looking posters i have seen and the sappy name Happy Christmas didn't help either.
Happy Christmas is Directed by Joe Swanberg and it stars Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham and Joe Swanberg. "Irresponsible 20-something Jenny arrives in Chicago to live with her older brother Jeff, a young film-maker living a happy existence with his novelist wife Kelly and their two-year-old son. Jenny's arrival shakes up their quiet domesticity as she and her friend Carson instigate an evolution in Kelly's life and career. Meanwhile, Jenny strikes up a rocky relationship with the family's baby sitter- cum- pot dealer."
Well thankfully Happy Christmas is not as terrible or out of place as it's marketing, Jesus that poster is just bad, but it's still far from being anything great, this is one of those pictures that's a good time but ultimately is unmemorable and i will have forgotten this one by the end of the week(probably being a little bit generous).
Drinking Buddies was one of last year's most talked about independent films, it was up there with something like Frances Ha in terms of talk but the fact is that i now realize that after having been released for over 90 days the movie only grossed a disgustingly low 343.000. dollars. An independent picture that was such a success critically and talked about only earned that! That's explains the why Joe Swanberg, wasn't able to move to something bigger because this film's budget has to be much lower than his previous work. The budget must have been really but really small, you can see that by it's run-time and by it's technical quality that's rather unimpressive.
But for such a small budgeted, little and limited picture Joe Swanberg is still able to offer it's audience something that's far from being terrible, by all means, Happy Christmas is never dramatically powerful and to say the truth there are not a lot of legitimate laughs in here but it's a film that's always able to be entertaining and it manages to keep a smile on our faces for the grand majority of it's run-time.
Happy Christmas is a movie that ultimately never surprises it's audience and it never really stands out but it also doesn't let you down. Again it's not ever that funny but it's always at least amusing, the performers here are lovable and real and that's probably the film's biggest stand out, the fact that it manages to sell these characters as real people, and because they are real people, we oddly seem to relate to them and be engaged by their stories and about what they have to say, though they at times seem short on things that they have to say.
Again you wont find anything memorable nor one of the year's best pictures in this movie, but Happy Christmas is certainly an entertaining and amusing enough of a watch, you wont regret if you see it i think, it's a movie that's easy to follow during it's short 80 minutes run-time but unfortunately also easy to forget.
Rating.C
