Oh What Fun movie review (2025)
Oh What Fun may be one of the most blatantly untrue movie titles of 2025. There is nothing remotely enjoyable about this miserable Christmas movie.
Making a decent or just average Christmas movie isn’t complicated. That’s why Hallmark and Lifetime can crank out a slew of them throughout December. The formula works and occasionally there will be some clever ones that can shake up the dynamics to be a lot of fun as well. It takes more effort to make a bad Christmas movie since filmmakers really don’t have to try hard to make a feel good, basic film.
The main takeaway from Oh What Fun is poor Michelle Pfeiffer deserved so much better than this holiday sludge.
Pfeiffer plays Claire Clauster, a wife and mother who starts prepping for Christmas in January. As December approaches this year, she’s looking forward to having the entire family back for another year of memories.
Claire’s husband, Nick (Denis Leary), is working on a dream house that he assumes his granddaughter and grandson will equally enjoy. Working on the house is preoccupying Nick’s time, but it’s just as well as Claire has the decorating, cooking and activity schedule all mapped out like clockwork.
First to arrive is Claire’s capable oldest daughter, Channing (Felicity Jones, The Brutalist) and her husband, Doug (Jason Schwartzman) and their two children. Next is the middle child, Sammy (Dominic Sessa, Now You See Me Now You Don’t), who’s bummed out after his girlfriend broke up with him right before Christmas. Finally, the youngest, Taylor (Chloe Grace Moretz) arrives and maintaining her annual tradition of bringing home a new girlfriend. In this case, it’s Donna (Devery Jacobs, Echo), a DJ who has no idea what’s in store for her this holiday.
Chandler Baker gets to co-write the screenplay from her 2021 short story with director/co-writer Michael Showalter. Good for Baker as she gets an additional paycheck from this adaptation, which probably should have just stayed a popular short story.
In addition to navigating the family dynamics, Claire is having a passive competition with her frenemy neighbor Jeanne (Joan Chen), who seemingly has a picture-perfect family. One of Jeanne’s daughters, Lizzie (Havana Rose Liu), happens to be Sammy’s childhood crush. Oh What Fun has plenty of unbelievable moments that just seem absurd as Showalter and Baker throw in one ridiculous scenario after another.
Outdone by Jeanne’s gift, Claire heads to the mall on Christmas Eve in search of a present that’s even better. With no indication that Claire was so wholly irrational beforehand, she walks out of the store instead of paying and evades a fleet of 40 mall cops as she speeds out of the parking lot.
Despite the insanity of this scene, Oh What Fun doesn’t mention it again even though there should be some consequences for her actions. That is the first and sadly not the last instance of sloppy writing and goofball antics that play out just for the sake of being silly. It’d be forgivable if these sequences were funny, but they’re so preposterous that they just come off as insulting.
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Oh What Fun gets to its crux when the family heads out for a dance concert and in the carpool confusion, Claire gets left behind. Infuriated that her family could ditch her, Claire decides to put herself first for a change and heads out for her own excursion. Naturally, the family goes into chaos without Claire to keep everything running smoothly.
It’s hard to blame Claire as the family — save the grandkids and the loving, but complacent Nick — are so insufferable and oblivious to her feelings.
The one thing Claire wanted for Christmas was to be nominated as an outstanding mother for her favorite talk show host’s Zazzy Tims’ (Eva Longoria, The Pickup) special Christmas episode. Since Zazzy is not a greedy corporation that is fine making her employees work on the holiday, this seemed like a stretch.
Regardless, Claire sets out to attend the show dropping any pretense of thought while her family seems to be wholly clueless on technology to learn her whereabouts.
Along the way, Claire encounters some quirky characters including a delivery driver, who seems to be included for a painfully unfunny Planes, Trains and Automobiles homage and a waste of the likable Danielle Brooks (Peacemaker). Pfeiffer is game to try and make the scenes work, but there’s only so much she can salvage with this material. Jones likewise gives a respectable performance that would be better served in a capable mother/daughter story.
Oh What Fun doesn’t offer great insight or moral lesson for the family outside of some token apologies for some truly terrible behavior. Save the gift receipt for this one as this is not worth dashing through the snow to see.
Rating: 1 out of 10
Photo Credit: Amazon
Oh What Fun and many more Christmas movies are still available to watch on Amazon Prime.
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