What was meant to be a tribute to George Michael sadly flopped and was a tad too cringe for me.
Set at Christmas time in London in 2017, Kate (Emilia Clark) is a 26-year-old girl from a family who moved to the UK following the Yugoslavia war. Throughout the first half of the film it is revealed that Kate had some kind of life-threatening illness that she has been struggling to recover from. She works in a Christmas shop and lives her life jumping from room to room of various friends’ houses.
Kate then meets Tom (Henry Golding), and her life begins to change for the better and then for the worse, and this is where the film goes wrong. Without giving away any spoilers, the way the film is constructed leaves a shocked yet weird vibe with the audience. It almost seems as if the writers didn’t know what to do after this major turn of events as consequently the film ended abruptly afterwards leaving the audience, with a ‘what next’ feeling but not in a way that begged for a ‘Last Christmas’ sequel.
That being said, there were some positive elements of the film. Firstly, the film raised awareness of some topical issues that are prevalent in society today. It highlighted the importance of organ donation, the problem of homelessness and also some attitudes in Britain today regarding immigrants living and working in this country. Secondly, the film did have some cracking one liners and scenes from the likes of Emma Thompson who played the role of a Yugoslavian Mother suffering with depression incredibly well. And finally, Emma Thompson again! I personally feel that she carried the film with her humour along with other actors such as Michelle Yeoah who played ‘Santa’ – the manager of the shop that Kate works at. The underlying comic value of their characters was what really kept the film going until the end.
Overall, although the film claims to be all things ‘George Michael’ it is merely a bog-standard Christmas film with one-minute snippets of his music in the background every now and then. This film had so much potential to be powerful and have a great impact but in my opinion, it simply did not do itself justice. However, if you fancy watching a new festive film that is quite comical in places, with some great film shots of London at Christmas time then watching this film isn’t the worst way to spend 90 minutes of your time. I would rate this film 2.5 stars out of 5.
You can watch ‘Last Christmas’ at the Savoy Cinema in Lenton at 3:30pm, 6:30pm and 8:30pm during the week and 2:30pm, 5:30pm and 8pm at weekends.
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