Every part of Christmas comedy Oh. What. Fun. is shamelessly regifted

Director Michael Showalter has mostly spent his post-State filmmaking career in the realm of romantic comedies, moving from his referential genre critiques (The Baxter, his script for They Came Together) to films that straightforwardly fit into its tropes (The Idea Of You). Christmas movies are similar vehicles for cliché, which aficionados of the subgenre will tell you is all part of the fun—it’s as comforting as getting the same Chocolate Orange in your stocking year after year after year. Those who don’t subscribe to that theory will loathe the sprawling tedium of Showalter’s holiday comedy Oh. What. Fun., and even those who do will find their holiday spirit tested.

Though it takes the 105-minute film a full 45 minutes for its premise to kick in, we’ll get to the point with a briskness that Oh. What. Fun. could only wish for from Santa. Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer), the long-suffering matriarch of the Clauster clan, gets left alone during the holidays when her family rushes off without her—to plans that she made. This being the final thankless straw, she flees her complacent family and rushes off into the night to find the appreciation she deserves.

“Ah, kinda like Home Alone!” a reasonable Christmas movie aficionado may think. And yes, that surface-level similarity is probably how this tale made it to the hallowed carousel of the Amazon streaming service in the first place. But one of many differences between this Home Alone plot point and its inspiration is that, aside from there being very little danger involved in leaving a full-grown Michelle Pfeiffer to her own devices, Oh. What. Fun. takes place 35 years later in a world where cell phones make these kinds of misunderstandings obsolete—especially misunderstandings that happen down the street and not on international flights. But as becomes apparent in the 45 minutes preceding Oh. What. Fun.‘s plot, Showalter and co-writer Chandler Baker (whose short story this film is based on) are less concerned about telling a story and more concerned about reassuring their audience that this is a Christmas movie, and that everyone’s standards should be lowered appropriately.

While it’s conventional wisdom that a film should avoid reminding those watching it about more established classics of its genre—especially directly—Oh. What. Fun. flouts this and goes the opposite direction. It all but encourages its streaming audience to immediately back out of the movie they’ve accidentally clicked on in order to browse Amazon’s selection of more established holiday fare. Namechecking or literally showing clips of films like Elf, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, It’s A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and many more, Oh. What. Fun. is so desperate to avoid being its own movie that it even pretends that children like The Polar Express.