I haven’t been watching a ton of movies lately. Mostly, I’ve been re-watching the same dozen or so movies (mostly Disney movies) or tv shows over and over again for months, because it brings me comfort. I read something once about how people with severe anxiety tend to rewatch the same handful of things over and over again because you already know what’s going to happen and you don’t have to deal with the tension or fear of uncertainty, or cliffhangers, or whatever. I’d say this is pretty accurate. I also don’t really watch anything too dark or heavy lately, even if I have seen it before and know that it’ll end up ok. I’ve been sticking to gentler, happier things (don’t ask me how many times I have watched Hilda or Phineas & Ferb lately; the number has got to be in the dozens by now).

But I did watch two new holiday movies over Christmas, so I figured I might as well offer a couple movie reviews over the next few days.

The first is for Happiest Season, streaming on Hulu, and starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis. You probably saw commercials for this at some point, and possibly a bunch of people talking about it online right after it came out. (Ha! Came out! How apropos!). Happiest Season is a Christmas movie, first and foremost, and it is also one of a very small number of LGBT/queer holiday films. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis play lesbian couple Abby and Harper. Abby doesn’t like Christmas, because it reminds her of her parents who died when she was 19. Harper wants to get her girlfriend into the holiday spirit and so invites her home for Christmas — only to reveal at the last possible second that she is not actually OUT to her family, and that Abby will have to pretend to just be a roommate Harper is bringing home because she had nowhere else to go for the holidays. All this deflates Abby’s plan to propose to Harper on Christmas eve.

As it turns out, Harper’s family are a) stinking filthy rich, b) politically-motivated (her father is running for mayor), and c) absolutely TERRIFYINGLY HORRIBLE PEOPLE. The parents, played by Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber and completely obsessed with giving the appearance of a perfect family (perfect, here, of course defined by very conservative values), and Harper and her three sisters are all back-biting bullies who are constantly fighting for supremacy and their father’s apparently-limited attention and love.

Meanwhile, poor Abby has been thrown to the wolves of this family with little warning or support from her girlfriend, who has turned into a completely different person before her eyes. Add in Harper’s ex-boyfriend, who clearly wants to rekindle their relationship (spurred on by Harper’s oblivious parents), and everything is sure to go to shit very quickly. In the middle of all this, Abby meets Harper’s ex-girlfriend Riley, played to perfection by Aubrey Plaza (can I just have a movie about HER character?), who knows well how Abby feels: she was likewise hidden away by Harper throughout their entire relationship, until Harper eventually outed Riley in a panic at the prospect of being caught.

So, let’s get down to brass tacks: I was so excited about the prospect of a qeer-women holiday movie when this first released, and  there are certainly parts of this movie I really liked. Kristen Stewart was wonderful in the role and she did a great job of coming across as sweet and earnest and more than a little heartbroken. Aubrey Plaza, as I said, was a delight. Probably the highlight of the whole film (unsurprisingly) was Dan Levy, playing Abby’s best friend. He’s saved from being the stereotypical token “sassy gay friend” by the fact that, of course, half the characters are gay. And, of course, because Dan Levy is just that FUNNY.

But it is flawed. The secondhand embarrassment of several scenes, when Abby is put in awkward situations, was so bad I literally couldn’t watch them. I had to fast-forward (thank god I hadn’t been able to watch this in theatres!). Harper’s parents are HORRENDOUS. And Harper spends most of the movie abandoning, gaslight, and emotionally-torturing Abby. Because this is a Christmas movie, we all know going on that there’s going to be a magical reconciliation at the end. Every Christmas movie has one, some more forced and unbelievable than others. This one takes the cake for unbelievability. Harper at NO POINT does any real thing to earn Abby’s trust or forgiveness. Nor does anything in the plot make us believe for a SECOND than Harper’s parents would just magically flip a switch and be okay with Harper’s sexuality at the end. And yet, that’s what we’re left with at the end.

Several reviewers (such as this article from Screenrant, and this blog post, just to list a couple) and many comments on Twitter have said the same thing I’m going to say: the chemistry between Abby and Riley was MUCH more believable by the end, and I think a more emotionally-honest and satisfying ending would have been if Abby broke up with Harper and got together with Riley, and Harper had to learn to accept her own sexuality on more honest and mature terms. All of this is frustrating because I am torn: on one hand, I have been dying for (and am very grateful for) a movie about lesbians that didn’t end with tragedy. SO MANY lesbian romance movies end with the couple breaking up in the face of societal pressure, or one or both of them dying, and I am SICK TO DEATH OF IT. But on the other hand, THIS particular happy ending just didn’t feel EARNED by the story in any real way. So… I’m stuck somewhere in the middle.

All in all, I’d give Happiest Season maybe a 3 stars out of 5?

One thing I can say for this movie: I have been playing around with the idea of writing my own queer-women-rom-com for awhile now, and this movie pushed me over the edge to actually trying to DO it. I’ve been sketching out notes and outlines for about a month now, so we’ll see how that goes…