Ex Factor
This film pissed all over my Christmas parade
Last week, I was feeling a bit miserable because it was raining and I’d finished my stash of pumpkin spice cake, a New York Times recipe I heartily recommend. I needed a Friday afternoon pick-me-up so thought ‘why not a Christmas movie?’ It’s mid-November after all. The first thing that came up on Netflix was A Merry Little Ex-Mas. You see what they did there? It’s a play on ‘Xmas’, the diminutive form! But for exes! EX-Mas! Because it’s exes spending Christmas together! The War of the Roses, plus baubles?? *Settles down with popcorn*
Some people think Christmas movies are silly. I love them, unironically, and take them very seriously. Check out my previous reviews of Hot Frosty and Falling For Christmas which both demonstrate my devotion to the genre. I was stoked for this viewing because of the brilliant title and because it stars Alicia Silverstone of Clueless fame and Melissa Joan Hart of Sabrina the Teenage Witch fame. And Oliver Hudson, who I was convinced played the dull devoted husband in The Ghost Whisperer, except it turns out that was someone else who looks exactly like him. With Cher and Sabrina at the helm (on screen and off), it’s a total nineties nostalgia-fest, though you have to get over a teensy bit of melancholy that they both look like middle-aged women now, because that’s what they are. I mean, this is actually a good thing – middle-aged women looking like middle-aged women! Rather than looking like the mummified corpse of Eva Peron. But I did have a little whinge to myself about the passing of time, how Clueless was only five or ten years ago, and that was when I first fell in love with Paul Rudd, my future husband. Paul Rudd isn’t in A Merry Little Ex-Mas, which is a real shame. Anything he isn’t in is a real shame, frankly.
Anyway, where was I? Exes! Alicia plays Kate who has just agreed a very amicable divorce with her soon-to-be-ex-husband Everett. Everyone still gets on, and they want to make Christmas Ex-tra special for their grown-up kids Sienna and Gabriel, plus Sienna’s Harry Potter-obsessed English boyfriend Nigel. I think Nigel’s supposed to be there for comic relief. But a turd is thrown in the eggnog by Everett, rocking up with his glamorous new girlfriend Tess, who is everything Kate is not - young, stunning, not as tiresomely committed to saving the planet. Kate is understandably thrown, and counters by pulling a himbo named Chet. I really loved Chet. He’s so hot, but also an incredible weirdo – I would watch a spin-off that was just him doing his various odd jobs and occasionally getting his kit off. I very much hoped that Kate and Chet would have passionate, explicit sex in her charming, quirky kitchen, to help her get over Everett, but she inexplicably rejected him. Let’s please note that Everett and his sidepiece Tess have definitely had sex, so I felt this lack of sex for Kate was sexist. The husband gets his end away while the wife stays chaste and true. THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT.
But the real story here is that since they married, Kate and Everett have lived in a traditional little town called Holly Tree Hill, or Mistletoe Springs, or Cinnamon Creek - something like that, you know the drill. One of those backwaters where everyone knows everyone and it snows all year round. Everett has two dads just to prove Yulelog Valley is a lovely welcoming place, but there’s no doubt it lacks opportunities for a sustainable architect with ambition, which is what Kate would have been if she wasn’t a handywoman - along with waitress, the only profession open to smalltown women in Christmas movies. Kate fucking hates living in Tinseltown, Hicksville USA, where wives come to desiccate. She gave up a promising career in the city to be Everett’s trad-slave while he waltzed off being a better doctor than he was a husband or father. It sounds like he was a right shit, to be honest, and it’s a wonder she didn’t divorce him sooner. But now – NOW - she secretly has a new job in Boston lined up, a plan to sell the family home and get her second chance at success. Yas kween!
So what happens, inevitably, is that over the Christmas period, thanks to shenanigans, Kate and Everett fall in love all over again, and Tess and Chet get booted out into the snowdrifts. Kate admits she can be a bit of an eco-bore, and Everett grudgingly acknowledges he could have come home occasionally. This is a bit of a turnaround given that a few scenes earlier he was thanking Kate for teaching him how to be a better husband and father to his next wife and future children, but hey-ho, Crimbo films are crackers. Having seen the error of their (mainly Everett’s) ways, they have a heart to heart on the balcony of the beautiful house that Kate is going to sell to fund her cherished dreams, and Everett says he’ll follow her to Boston; that she deserves her moment in the spotlight. This is her time! Go girl!
I thought: great, we have a reversal of the usual festive romcom trope of ‘city girl goes to the sticks and discovers the charm of smalltown life’. What a radical idea! We’re going to see reformed bellend Everett tidying their trendy penthouse apartment while Kate dashes back from a busy day in the big smoke. They’ll go to the theatre, eat out, look at art, get splashed by cabs and laugh together on the concrete sidewalk. Fantastic.
But what actually happens… what actually happens… bear with me, I’m still upset… what actually happens is that Kate changes her mind and decides to stay in Jinglebell Hollow after all. She downgrades her expectations, says no to the big job and stays put like a dutiful wife. Sure, she ‘starts her own business’ in Twinklesdale and has slightly straighter boss-hair in the ‘One Year Later’ catch-up, but FUCK THAT SHIT. MOVE TO THE CITY, BITCH.
I’m so pissed off and let down. I was quite enjoying it as otherwise the plot is amiable enough and there’s some decent dialogue. Chet is great eye candy cane, and Melissa Joan is engaging as Kate’s bestie, April. It’s all good (sadly clean) fun and has the potential for a really interesting happy-ever-after. AND THEY FUCKED IT. Cher and Sabrina, both producers of this shitshow, are definitely on my naughty list, the batty old crones.
So, in the end it actually was a real shame, not just because Paul Rudd wasn’t in it (if he is ever in a Christmas movie then all my Christmases will come at once*) but because of the ANNOYING BOLLOCKS ending. I have to go and drink heavily now, and then probably get very maudlin about the passing of time and stare at my jowls in the mirror, but at least I live in the city and can take a job as a sustainable architect if I feel like it.
As Jacob Marley says, ‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ and Kate is surely destined to remain shackled to the kitchen table making gingerbread houses instead of real ones. It makes my blood boil.
I told you I took it all seriously. I’m off to smash some fairy lights.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas, Netflix
*Yes, I know Paul Rudd IS in a Christmas movie, called All Is Bright, but in the same way Die Hard is a Christmas movie despite not being a Christmas movie, All Is Bright isn’t a Christmas movie despite being a Christmas movie.