With its agenda to focus on the female characters set out very clearly at the start, MGM/Amazon's big 2025 festive offering presents Michelle Pfeiffer as a 'holiday hero' suburban mum, Claire, doing everything she can to make Christmas special for her unappreciative family, but as they unknowingly leave her behind Home Alone-style when setting off to a Christmas Eve dance show (for which she had bought the tickets), Claire sets off on her own mini-adventure and inadvertently becomes a TV star of the moment. Most of the story ideas feel played out by the mid-point, and Claire's solo adventure feels flimsy and underdeveloped at best, with her appearance on her TV heroine's lifestyle show contrived and somewhat desperate. The supposed comedy set-ups offer very slim pickings, a highlight being son Sammy's awful emo-styled rendition of a well-known Christmas song, and the over-familiar domestic/family/Christmas dramas are played out through rather worn tick-box character types (although as Claire's grown-up children, Felicity Jones, Chloe Grace Moretz and Dominic Senna do turn in solid performances). With its declared intention to focus on its female characters, the male characters are largely feckless, underwritten and barely register, and the film is resolutely white-upper-middle-class (with brief stereotypical appearances from a 'perfect' neighbouring Asian family and a sassy young black delivery driver whose appearance in the story serves unclear purpose). It is a rather one-note movie that grinds along to demonstrate its unsurprising central message, saved by Pfeiffer's professional and always-watchable performance, but it is rather low-powered and offers little festive cheer.
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