First Hit: It started off on the silly side, and by the end, I was very touched by this heartfelt story.
I’d seen the previews for this story and thought, oh, this could be a silly sort of way to spend an hour and a half. However, I’m glad I didn’t judge the movie by the preview. It has a beautiful and deeply touching message.
The story begins with watching a young Kate (Madison Ingoldsby as young Kate) being the lead singer in a Yugoslavian church choir. Her mother, Petra (Emma Thompson), Ivan her father (Boris Isakovic), and her sister Marta (young Marta played by Lucy Miller) are in the audience watching. There is a moment in this scene that plays out later with the sister Marta looking at another person in the choir.
Roll into the future, and the twenty-something years old Kate (Emilia Clarke) is living in London as is her whole family. Kate is working at a Christmas store that’s open year-round, owned by “Santa” (Michelle Yeoh), who loves Christmas and the magic it brings. Kate is her employee and dresses like an elf. We get that Kate isn’t a perfect employee but that Santa likes her for some reason.
Kate rushes out of the store to make singing and acting auditions but is usually late, rarely prepared, and seems to have lost her ability to sing as well. We soon get that Kate’s in a rut, which is compounded by her almost always homelessness. She’s often shown dragging around her roller suitcase. At times, when she needs a place to sleep, she picks up guys in bars, sleeps with them, but something invariably happens, and she’s back on the streets.
Her friends, like Jenna and Rufus (Ritu Arya and Ansu Kabia respectively), give her a room, but within two days, she’s messed this up, and they ask her to leave. She tries to reconcile with her family, but her mom is tough, and her father hides from her mom as much as possible. She and her sister Marta (Lydia Leonard) seem to be at each other’s throats, and there appears to be no love lost anywhere. The family dynamics are really screwed up.
All during these scenes, we are under the impression that Kate has no common sense, is flighty, and very ungrounded. Some would say unlucky. There is some hint that something happened to Kate about a year ago, but at this stage in the film, we are not privy to that part of the story. Did this event cause this ungrounded flighty nature?
One day Tom (Henry Golding) pops into her life one day and impresses upon her to take a walk with him. She declines, but on the second random meeting, they walk, and you can see his caring and compassion for others, including Kate. The chemistry is strong between them, and he just seems like a wonderfully lovely person who’s taken an interest in Kate. She wants to see him again and asks for his mobile number, but he says he doesn’t use it, and it’s kept in a kitchen cupboard at home, so giving Kate his name would be useless.
On one of the walks, Tom takes her to a homeless shelter. Thinking he’s trying to get her to stay there, she discovers differently; he volunteers his time at the shelter and says she could help as well. But as Tom is prone to do, Tom disappears for days at a time. No one seems to know where he is.
Kate begins to sing outside the shelter, collecting money, hoping that Tom will pop-up again. Alas, he doesn’t, but just as she becomes even more despondent Tom shows up again.
One evening she tells him what happen to her a year ago and why she doesn’t feel like a whole person anymore. It is genuinely a sweet scene. He tells her that she can change her life by being open to others and by making kinder decisions. She’s not a victim and can change her life.
Tom’s influence has a positive effect on Kate. She starts to make amends with “Santa,” her mom, dad, and sister. She volunteers more at the homeless shelter and is more thoughtful. An example of this is early in the film we see her getting picked up at a bar from some guy using a standard line. Now, we see her in a bar, she gets the same pickup line from another bloke, and she makes a better decision.
A fun secondary story is about “Santa” trying to find companionship dates for herself. One day “Santa” meets “boy” (Peter Mygind), and how they engage with each other is so sweet and funny.
I cannot delve into what happens to Kate that made her feel the way she does, nor how Tom is there to help her see the light, but the story is sweet, and the ending was fun and touching.
Clarke is a hoot and actually inspirational as the film moved along. She did a great job of making this character work. Golding was beautiful as the man who pops into Kate’s life to provide hope and inspiration. Yeoh is hilarious as the Christmas store owner who can see Kate’s sweet side. Mygind was excellent as “boy,” the man who brought joy to “Santa’s” life. Arya and Kabia are fantastic as Kate’s friends, who keep supporting and allowing her to get better. Thompson was oddly funny and entertaining in her role as Kate’s mother. Isakovic was terrific as the browbeaten husband of Petra and Kate’s father. Leonard was harsh in her role as Kate’s sister, with whom there were a lot of animosities. I didn’t think this part of the film was developed enough, and their conversations felt too jarring at times. Thompson and Bryony Kimmings wrote this screenplay in such a way that it didn’t telegraph the ending, and that was a good thing. Paul Feig got the feel of this story right.
Overall: After the end credits, I was surprised by how much I ended up liking this film.