Why critics were wrong about Emilia Clarke’s 2019 film Last Christmas

It was universally savaged when it came to cinemas last year, but Last Christmas is one of the best Christmas movies ever.

Warning: This article contains Last Christmas spoilers that, in all honesty, you probably already know about.

Screw you guys, Last Christmas is a good movie. That’s probably a not-very-Christmas-y way to put that, but given that it’s the middle of July, I think we can do away with holiday niceties.

Last Christmas – which is now available to stream on Binge – was not well-reviewed by critics when it came to theatres last November.

It currently has a 46 per cent rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s pretty annoying given that Last Christmas was one of the best Christmas movies I’d seen in quite some time.

Directed by Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Spy, A Simple Favor), it’s a romantic comedy starring Emilia Clarke as a grumpy, disgruntled Christmas story employee and Henry Golding as the charming but mysterious do-gooder she falls in love with.

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Emilia Clarke in Last Christmas. Picture: Universal Pictures

Let’s get this out of the way right now: Yes, Henry Golding’s character is a ghost, and yes, the internet figured out that twist approximately two seconds after Universal released the trailer.

If you’re the kind of person who’s turned off by predictable twists, Last Christmas is not for you. But if you’re the kind of person who likes movies with something beautiful to say about humanity – said in a way that makes you laugh and cry – then Last Christmas is definitely for you.

You see, Emilia Clarke’s character, Kate, recently fell so gravely ill that she had to have a heart transplant. Since then, she’s been acting out.

She’s rude to her boss (Michelle Yeoh) and to the customers at the Christmas shop where she works in London. She spitefully outs her sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) to their Yugoslavian immigrant parents (Emma Thompson and Boris Isaković).

When she first meets Tom (Golding) – a guy she meets after being pooed on by a bird, a new addition to the rom-com meet-cute – she mocks him for volunteering at a homeless shelter. After all, caring about people and things is lame … Right?

I mean, wrong, obviously. Last Christmas is unabashedly cheesy about its moral Christmas lesson, and it’s just as unabashedly cheesy about its plot line.

Tom is a ghost. He was killed in a bicycle accident last Christmas. It’s his heart beating in Emilia’s chest. Maybe you’ve heard those stories about people with heart transplants taking on new personalities, and thought, “There could be a terrible Hallmark movie with that concept.”

Feig and Thompson – who co-wrote the script with Bryony Kimmings – did you one better: They gave you a great movie with a Hallmark concept.

The film is beautifully shot, and the streets of London glisten with magic.

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Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding are charming in Last Christmas. Picture: Universal Pictures

Feig, known for his surprising but often brilliant casting, does it again here, by taking Clarke, everyone’s favourite all-powerful Game of Thrones dragon queen, and turning her into a vulnerable mess.

The world he builds is rich and full, and the smallest of side characters – from Kate’s sister to the manager of the homeless shelter – feel like complex human beings with their own lives and backstories.

There’s a theme of immigration woven throughout that is touched on via both Kate’s family and the background actors, who are intentionally diverse, proudly speaking to London’s multicultural population. And through all of this, the film never once stops being charming and funny.

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Last Christmas is simply magic. Picture: Universal Pictures

Critics faulted the movie for its cheesy premise. And look, I get it. We’ve been trained to think Hallmark movie premises are bad because most of those Hallmark movies are bad.

But those movies are bad because the directing, acting, and writing are all not great! They shoot them in two to three weeks! They’re not aiming for great! That’s okay! That is not the case with Last Christmas, which is both very cheesy and very well done.

At its heart (get it?), Last Christmas is about the joy and satisfaction there is to be found in helping others, which can only be done once you start helping yourself.

Yes, it’s clichéd. Yes, it’s melodramatic. Of course it is. It’s a Christmas movie, silly! But it’s a great Christmas movie, and if you haven’t yet checked it out, I strongly suggest you do so. Even in July.

This article originally appeared on Decider and was reproduced with permission