TL;DR: Oh. What. Fun. wants to reinvent the holiday movie through a mom-focused lens, but ends up serving a reheated casserole of old clichés, confusing tonal shifts, and underdeveloped emotional arcs. Michelle Pfeiffer shines through the clutter, but even she can’t salvage a film that mistakes busyness for storytelling and empty platitudes for catharsis.
Oh. What. Fun.
I knew Oh. What. Fun. and I were off to a rocky start the moment Michelle Pfeiffer delivered the film’s thesis like she was reading aloud from a feminist Medium essay circa 2014: Christmas movies are always about dads, men, dudes who barely know where the wrapping paper lives, while moms—actual holiday workhorses—get relegated to the emotional background radiation. And honestly? She’s right. If anyone deserves a starring role in the annual December chaos, it’s the mother who has single-handedly prevented Christmas from collapsing into a flaming trash fire.
So imagine my excitement when I sat down expecting a holiday movie centered around a chaotic, exhausted, maybe slightly unhinged mom navigating the yuletide minefield. What I got instead was a film that feels like letting ChatGPT write a Hallmark movie after feeding it too many Real Housewives episodes and a stack of out-of-context therapy memes. Oh. What. Fun. isn’t just a misfire; it’s a sleigh ride into tonal confusion, where every emotional beat lands like a snowball full of gravel.
This movie promises a mom-centric Christmas romp. What it delivers is a cast of characters who seem vaguely annoyed to be in the same room together, wrapped in a story that desperately wants to say something meaningful but instead shrugs and hands you a moral so outdated it should come with a VCR.
My holiday spirit did not survive.
Why Oh. What. Fun. Trips Over Its Own Candy Cane Ambition
Watching Oh. What. Fun. feels like watching someone try to juggle ornaments while roller-skating in the dark. There is simply too much going on, and all of it demands more oxygen than the movie ever gives it.
Michelle Pfeiffer’s Claire Clauster—whose name sounds suspiciously like a rejected Whoville matriarch—is spiraling through multiple plotlines. She has a feud with her Type-A neighbor Jeanne Wang-Wasserman (Joan Chen), an obsession with talk show host Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria), a brief bonding arc with delivery driver Morgan (Danielle Brooks), and a personal mission to engineer the Perfect Christmas Experience™ for her family, even if it kills her. The movie never decides which of these threads is the actual story. Instead, it swings between them like a sugar-addled toddler chasing a candy cane on a string.
To be fair, chaos is part of the appeal of any holiday movie. But good Christmas chaos—your Home Alones, your Jingle All the Ways—has intention. This movie has noise. And I found myself spending large chunks of the runtime trying to remember which subplot we had abandoned 20 minutes earlier.
The problem intensifies when the film shifts focus to the Clauster family’s internal dynamics. Nick (Denis Leary) gets trapped in a slapstick side quest to assemble a toy house, and honestly, his scenes have the closest thing to consistent comedic timing. Sammy (Dominic Sessa), the youngest, is dealing with a breakup that plays like TikTok-approved “sad boy Christmas” content. Then there’s the bizarre antagonism between Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her brother-in-law Doug (Jason Schwartzman), which the movie seems to think is hilarious but instead lands like Mean Girls fan fiction written during a layover.
But nothing is as baffling, or as poorly handled, as Claire’s relationship with her eldest daughter Channing (Felicity Jones). This is supposed to be the emotional core—the heart of the film, the Bittersweet Holiday Lesson, the whole reason we’re here. Instead, it’s treated with the depth of a seasonal Starbucks cup slogan. Their entire conflict feels like something the writers outlined on a whiteboard, forgot about, and then hastily resolved using phrases like “setting emotional boundaries” and “holding space.” As someone who has survived his fair share of forced Christmas therapy sessions in real life, let me tell you: this ain’t it.
The movie wants the catharsis of a heartfelt family breakthrough without putting in the work to earn it. It’s emotional speedrunning, and not in a fun Games Done Quick way.
The Humor Sometimes Works, But Only in Fleeting “Wait, That Was Funny?” Moments
I won’t lie—Oh. What. Fun. occasionally made me laugh. You can’t assemble a cast like Pfeiffer, Chen, Longoria, Brooks, Moretz, Leary, and Schwartzman without stumbling into humor at least occasionally. There’s an inspired scene where Claire ends up dancing on Zazzy Tims’ talk show, and it has the manic energy of a mom who has had seven coffees, zero sleep, and one very large existential crisis. There’s also a surprisingly relatable sequence where Claire connects with a group of fellow mothers about the crushing expectations of holiday perfection—a moment that felt so real it almost belonged in a different movie.
But these moments are fireflies in a cave: occasional flickers of light swallowed up by vast darkness. The movie’s comedic tone swings wildly between sitcom-style pratfalls, snarky generational quips, and darkly cynical family banter. None of it meshes.
The result is a viewing experience that feels like channel-surfing through three different movies that were never supposed to coexist, and someone taped them all together with holiday-themed washi tape.
A Christmas Movie Stuck in 2003 Cosplaying as 2024
For a film that claims to be a modern Christmas story, Oh. What. Fun. feels weirdly outdated. It wants to subvert the old “mom is the glue holding the broken family together” trope, yet it embraces those exact clichés with the enthusiasm of a punch-drunk mall Santa.
And then there’s the film’s thesis—“Family forgives, no matter what.” In 2024, this message feels like a boomer Facebook graphic your aunt posts between minion memes. Audiences today are openly interrogating toxic family systems, setting boundaries, and rejecting harmful generational patterns. This movie, meanwhile, hands you a message that should come with a shrug emoji.
Even the film’s attempt to feel contemporary—a token gay daughter—comes across as checkbox representation rather than meaningful characterization. It’s diversity by way of copy-paste.
The biggest tragedy of all? Michelle Pfeiffer is giving this everything. She throws herself into Claire with the same gusto she brought to Catwoman decades ago. She deserves a movie that understands what to do with her. She deserves a script that lets her be messy, funny, human, and heartfelt. Instead, she’s trapped in a film that treats character depth like optional downloadable content.
The Verdict: Oh. What. Fun. Isn’t Just Misnamed—It’s Misguided
I desperately wanted to love this movie. I’m a sucker for a good messy-mom Christmas comedy. I’m the guy who still watches The Family Stone annually and cries over a decorative snow globe. But Oh. What. Fun. is the cinematic equivalent of a Christmas cookie baked at the wrong temperature: underdone at the center and weirdly burnt around the edges.
There are glimmers of the film this could’ve been—a sharp, heartfelt examination of the invisible labor mothers shoulder during the holidays. A comedy that embraces the joyful chaos of family life instead of punishing its characters for existing. A modern story that finally gives women the emotional and narrative space they’ve always deserved in holiday films.
Instead, Oh. What. Fun. chooses to be a collection of disjointed subplots, half-baked emotional arcs, and characters who oscillate between unlikable and inexplicably apathetic.
And Michelle Pfeiffer, marvelous as she is, can’t save it.
