PSSST! In case you haven’t heard, the five-day forecast predicts the weather during the holidays to be delightful.
Delightful or frightful as the holiday song croons, movies are always appropriate recourse for families to indulge when time affords.
One of the season’s offerings is “Last Christmas” the first film feature to spotlight the festive period when family, food, fashion and shopping collide with a religious celebration of the miraculous Christian birth.
The first big screen feature of the season turned the spotlight on a homeless elf, a dysfunctional family, an Asian store owner obsessed with all things Christmas, a mysterious Good Samaritan and music voiced by the late pop singer George Michael.
Fifteen of his songs shape the soundtrack to the romantic comedy and the sappy tale arrived ahead of the usual avalanche of stories annually sold in time for Thanksgiving and the advent when schools pause for families to unite.
Starring Emilia Clarke as Kate, the film focusses on a restless young woman who pounds the pavement of the streets of London in search of independence because living with her family seems too burdensome.
The character transforms herself from being the former “Game of Thrones” fantasy actress to a year-round costumed elf employed by a shop owner audiences will readily recognize from her role on television’s “Crazy Rich Asians.”
That employer is portrayed by Michelle Yeoh.
One day when a customer enters the overdressed establishment, Kate feels unusually drawn by his presence. Not quite the catch audiences might imagine Henry Golding, portraying Tom, a mysterious visitor to the London-based shop, Kate considers him underwhelming.
There to browse not to buy, initially his gaze unfavorably registers with unwanted stalking effect.
With repeated visits to her workplace, Kate soon realizes that his behavior mirror that of a relentless stalker.
For longer than one would imagine, Tom pursues his Kate.
Eventually Kate relents and together they connect.
The music of George Michael binds the connection between the fulltime elf and a stranger adding romance to the mix.
Fans will reminisce the hits of the British pop singer who died three years ago on Christmas day.
The short of it is that Kate and Tom become an item.
Together they savor the city and season and become entranced by the emotions that accompany love.
The long must be endured in cinemas now showing the PG-13-rated, 103 minutes, holiday, romantic comedy.
Directed by Paul Feig with a screenplay by Emma Thompson and Bryony Kimmings, Thompson also portrays the annoying immigrant parent who unknowingly unnerves her daughter Kate and the entire family by reprising foreign traditions related to her European tradition.
“Last Christmas” might not deliver comfort and joy but the music will certainly offer retrospective nostalgia of Michael, the music-making duo he collaborated to form Wham! and the hits he gave the world.
More distinctively with the debut of this flick, fans will again revel with memories of a prolific talent who left much too soon three years ago on Christmas Day.
If nothing else, the film with its quirky twist will rekindle delightful memories of the catalogue Michael built singing “Faith,” “Careless Whisper,” “One More Try” and others that yielded $80 million sales.
More than any other during this season the one he branded scoring a winning hit in 1984 titled “Last Christmas.”
