Oh. What. Fun. (2025)
Directed by: Michael Showalter
Premise: A mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) frets over holiday preparations while her grown children do nothing to help. Fed up, she abandons the family on Christmas Eve.
What Works: Oh. What. Fun. positions itself as a female equivalent of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The 1989 film was about a suburban father trying to give his family the perfect Christmas holiday. Oh. What. Fun. focuses on a family matriarch and her Christmas to-do list and the way the family takes her efforts for granted. The first third of Oh. What. Fun. is the best part because it acknowledges that, like the father in Christmas Vacation, the mother is trying too hard and takes everything to a ridiculous extreme. Oh. What. Fun. includes overt references to holiday classics especially John Hughes’ pictures Home Alone and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles which suggest some self-awareness of its genre.
What Doesn’t: Unfortunately, after flirting with satire or at least implying awareness of the Hallmark Christmas movie aesthetic, the filmmakers veer back into familiar territory in a way that is stupid. The family forgets to bring their mother along on a holiday outing she planned; apparently everyone also forgot that they own cell phones which would have solved the problem. The mother takes off on an impromptu road trip and attends a recording of her favorite television talk show which for some reason is taping on Christmas. Oh. What. Fun also suffers from the casting. The actors give decent performances but they’re not believable as a family. None of these people look like they came from the same gene pool. The characters of Oh. What. Fun. are not pleasant to be around, including the mother. The early awareness that the mother is being ridiculous is dropped. Rather than the good-hearted absurdism of Christmas Vacation, the tone of Oh. What. Fun. turns very self-pitying. These people, whose live an extraordinarily posh lifestyle, are mopey and mean. The filmmakers seem to think they are making a feminist point but the latter part of Oh. What. Fun. becomes a pity party, reassuring wealthy women that they are victims. It’s tone deaf and off-putting and contrary to the spirit of the season. When Oh. What. Fun. finally gets to the family reconciliation, the story runs on autopilot. It’s forgiveness without any action and comes across perfunctory and disingenuous.
Disc extras: Available on Amazon Prime.
Bottom Line: Oh. What. Fun. isn’t much fun at all. What begins promisingly self-aware is derailed by stupid storytelling and unlikable and unbelievable characters, ending in a glob of holiday clichés and noxious self-pity.
Episode: #1079 (December 21, 2025)