Holidaze Watch: Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (2024)

Watched:  12/10/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Tyler Taormina

Seeking something new that wasn't released on Netflix or Hallmark, we put on Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (2024).  

Sometimes you see a movie you know is technically very good, and will *definitely* please the sorts of people who become professional film critics, but leaves you absolutely flat by the movie's end.  And, for me, this is one of those.  I feel almost guilty talking about it.  I know of a folk or two who have told me they liked it...  And, to them, I am sorry.

I can acknowledge what the creative team did here was an absolutely remarkable achievement and they pulled off all sorts of things that shouldn't work.  But I finished the movie understanding the point - and still... nothing.  Maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind, or maybe I'm just too old.  Maybe I'm not from Long Island enough.*

The basic set-up is the cacophonous Christmas Eve celebration of a large and extended (and, I think) Italian family in the suburbs outside of New York City.  It's a kaleidoscope of family personalities, issues, and melodrama all caught and crossing in a single evening - the kind of evening like Christmas Eve, which is one of the rare occasions where this much family comes together just to be together. 

Using that concept, the eye of the audience floats between snippets of conversations, revealing to us the members of the family, their concerns, their issues, the things that bring them joy.  But - and you just know it's one of these movies from the first moments - it's also a movie here to remind you that people disagree on things like "what to do with mom", that teen daughters resent their mothers for no reason, that some people in the family will always struggle.  

I won't get into all the characters but there are dozens.  Too many, in some ways, but I understand what the filmmakers were doing.  The problem is - people are reduced to bullet points of their troubles and everything else is boiled down to basic upper-middle-class-ness.  Everyone gets their five to ten minutes of story.

Curiously, Michael Cera - a producer on the movie - is in his own little movie in this one as a cop who has a complicated relationship with his partner.  And it feels like it was absolutely shoehorned in from a different film.  I don't hate it, but it's... odd to say the least in a movie that otherwise wants to feel almost like a home movie.

For the final 1/3rd or more, the movie breaks from the family gathering into various factions as the teens split off - sneaking out.  While the middle-aged adults stay back drinking.  And the evening wears on.

I was reminded of my viewing of 8 1/2 from earlier this year, not in quality or content, but in that I think viewers of different ages and experience will come to this movie and see different things depending on their point in life.  I imagine the adults will look foolish to younger viewers, and I will say, the movie is honest in it's depiction of suburban teens in many ways, and it's not entirely flattering.

The film is beautifully shot, remarkably well-edited - just the fact you can follow the movie is a testament to editing and careful cinematography.  

The overarching thread is about the continuation of family as generations come and go, and how those generations come together.  The one main thread is a teen daughter who is furious at her mother for existing in only the way a high schooler can be, while that same middle-aged mom is struggling with the decline of her own mother.  

But at the end of the day, it's a series of vignettes.  And... I didn't care?  

Which makes me sound like a monster, but the movie's characters never get enough screentime for you to care about them any more than people you meet at an overcrowded party.  That paragraph above?  Where I talk about the main thread?  That's as much as I know about anyone on screen (I knew one character's name by the time the movie ended).  And you may share all the conjured emotion I felt watching the movie from reading my description.**  

All of the topics loaded into the film are Very Important and Very Human, and, to the movie's credit, not handled ham-handedly.  But I'm not sure acknowledging that relationships are tough, family is complicated and teens make-out isn't maybe a bit of a cheat and reviewer bait.  Nor am I sure acknowledging life isn't a Hallmark movie is any more novel to me than 90's arthouse movies that wanted to blow the lid off the burbs and show that stuff sucks, actually.  

Look, "It reminds me of reality" is certainly a thing one can do making a movie.  It's fun to feel some semblance of reality and relate to things.  But I'm always amazed how much reviewers and critics hang a good review on emulating real stuff (and we are *bombarded* with real stuff, which is a discussion for another day).  

I just wish this movie had more to say about reality once it parked there and wanted to sit in the car and enjoy the vibes.  After a while?  That slow intro that you realize is the movie just keeps happening, and this movie drags.  Full disclosure, I paused the movie, certain we had a few minutes left - believing we'd already been watching for nearly 100 minutes, and was devastated to find out we were at minute 60+ and had 39 minutes left (including credits).

As long as I've already mentioned it, I'll point to  8 1/2, which has lots to say about reality.  But emulating that reality isn't the goal.  I'm not saying everyone needs to be Fellini, but I am saying...  I'm not sure "gee, this feels real" is as much a goal as it is a tool.  This was a "swing for the fences" kind of film, and the ball may have gone foul, just a foot or so outside the line, while still landing in the upper balcony.  Slice of life stuff is certainly a thing.  I just wish they'd had a direction they were headed that didn't feel like pretty SOP "life sure is complicated" stuff to wade through.

*I've been there exactly once for about 2.5 days for work, and I was still like "oh, yeah...  that's Long Island".    

**spoiler - I didn't give a shit that the girl (a) didn't give her mom her secret santa present, (b) that she threw it away or (c) that she tried to get it back and couldn't or (d) that we saw the present artfully lost in snow.  And I KNOW that was supposed to hit me in the feels.  But it hit me in the powerpoint presentation of storytelling.