Oh. What. Hazar. Review – Michelle Pfeiffer leads the Unbaked Christmas Turkey at Amazon | Michelle Pfeiffer

IIf you’ve already overindulged in Netflix’s overwhelmingly cheap and cheerful Christmas movies this season, Amazon has something meatier to add to your plate. Like Netflix, it also has enough Hallmark rip-offs that are made simple (step forward, Tyler Perry’s Finding Joy), but it’s also aiming a little higher with Oh. What. Hazar. It’s a more forceful attempt at reminiscing about something we’re used to seeing on the big screen rather than the small one with the right cast, a star-studded cross between Home Alone and The Family Stone with a brand new soundtrack from some unusually top-tier artists.

Given the genre’s lower budget and even lower ambition, it’s easy to be blinded by the names attached. The film is directed by Michael Showalter, the trusted hand behind films like The Big Sick, Wet Hot American Summer, and The Idea of ​​You! The film stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Felicity Jones, Jason Schwartzman, Danielle Brooks, and Chloë Grace Moretz! There are new songs from Fleet Foxes, Gwen Stefani, Sharon Van Etten and more! Sufficient experience may have shown us that even the most talented people tend not to make the greatest films, but there is something in the sheer effort expended on this film that seems noteworthy where others seem to have given up trying. Could actual fun be in Christmas cards?

Well…no is the short answer. It doesn’t take long to realize that Oh. What. Hazar. It’s ultimately less about creating a somewhat entertaining festive film and more about marketing Amazon’s product in a soulless Q4. The film, with its easily recognizable cast and easily explainable setting (what if it were a family at Christmas), seems to exist mostly to promote the retail side of the business (the hard-to-escape ads actually push the film alongside seasonal-adjacent products). Maybe that would help sell some extra decorations because otherwise it doesn’t start out as a movie.

It’s a shame, because the basic idea at its center is an elegant one. As Pfeiffer’s mother, Claire, points out, mothers are insulted at Christmas, both in real life and in the movie. Her character and writer Chandler Baker’s goal is to try to fix this, but their methods for doing so take a buzzy idea and turn it into mush. Claire is obsessed with daytime TV personality Zazie Thames (Eva Longoria) and fixated on her annual Best Mum of Christmas contest, pleading with her demanding but ungrateful children (played by Jones, Moretz and The Holdovers’ Dominic Cessa) to nominate her. When she begins to realize that they haven’t, and after they accidentally leave her behind while heading to a Christmas Eve concert she’s booked tickets for, she decides to make a run for it, heading somewhere where she’ll be treated more as, as one character later says, a “boss whore” rather than “everybody’s whore.”

A mother’s unfairly understated rage during the holiday season is enough to fuel a violent thriller, not to mention a sparkling comedy, but Baker and Showalter, who co-wrote it, waste it all on a disjointed premise of increasing silliness and increasing repulsion. Claire’s feelings of injustice are substantial and relatable enough without her bizarre insistence on winning a TV competition, a bizarre obsession that quickly turns her into a nerd of a magnitude that the film never wants to reckon with (at one point, someone says, “I can’t decide whether she’s an icon or a trainwreck,” and neither does the film). There is a darker, more suspenseful and more interesting story about the facts of Which Personal indeed, but here she’s completely out of place in a comedy that tries, and largely fails, to go for more serious sentimentality (I was reminded of a much shorter and much more successful SNL sketch, in which star Kristen Wiig plays a mother who gets a discounted robe while her family, including the dog, receives more and more gifts).

It also makes it difficult for Pfeiffer to really know how to play her role, leaving the actress a little lost as she tries to add gravitas to her bewildering request (a mother who expects her children to respect and help her during the busiest time of the year will be more than enough for us to care about). Her quest is weak and uninvolving, and unlike Planes, Trains and Automobiles (the film she points out early on), devoid of much humor or conflict. Along the way, she meets the underutilized Brooks, playing a Christmas delivery driver, who, you know, loves her job and the opportunities travel affords her! (See, Amazon’s not so bad after all!) Distractions come in the form of an appearance by Andy Cohen, an obligatory bar-dance number (like many things in The Family Stone, it’s a pale imitation), Jones awkwardly struggling with an American accent and a welcome but one-note turn by Joan Chen.

But nothing can distract us from the script that doesn’t work, the family dynamics we don’t believe, the jokes we don’t laugh at, and the characters we don’t care about. Oh. What. Hazar. It’s just nothing.