Movie Reviews
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Oh. What. Fun.’ on Amazon Prime Video, a cruddy Christmas comedy that Hangs Michelle Pfeiffer out to dry
Oh. What. Fun. (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) is for all the put-upon moms out there who do all the work during Christmas. They bake cinnamon rolls, wrap presents, light candles, deck the halls, haul the decks, glaze the ham, arrange cookies just so in little tins, take out the trash, feed the ceremonial holiday chupacabra, lubricate the hydraulics on the cement mixer – whatever the tradition calls for, they do it. They all live in gigantic houses and look like Michelle Pfeiffer, too, with her hair in a loose side braid and a $229 Williams Sonoma apron around her waist. But this particular Xmas-movie mom has had enough of being underappreciated, and that’s why there’s a record-scratch FZWOOP sound about 80 seconds in. (You’ve been warned.) So: is Oh. What Fun. any actual fun? Well. About that.
The Gist: Claire Clauster (Pfeiffer) has an ax to grind, and we can almost hear blade hitting stone as she narrates about how every Christmas movie is about men, men, men. In reality, it’s the women who are “the true heroes of the holidays,” she says. They do all the work while everyone else sips cocoa on the couch and steps on all the best lines in Christmas Vacation. I’d feel a little more sympathetic for Claire if she didn’t come right out and admit that she starts planning for Christmas on Jan. 1, which is rather OTT, right? But hahaha, this movie isn’t necessarily about how it might be OK if she’d just elect to do one or two less things every Christmas. I mean, maybe she’s doing some of this to herself, which is what the movie is sorta accidentally about sometimes? I mean, it’s not a big deal if the fam dropped the chupacabra ceremony from the Xmas tradition agenda – it’s always so long, drawn-out and messy, what with all the blood, you know? – so Mom can put her feet up for a stretch. She always insists on polishing the extra-fancy tridents first, and badger livers are so expensive now, what with the tariffs. Maybe we should just skip it this year. I’m sure Jesus won’t mind.
Wait, are we still talking about the FZWOOP movie? Yes of course! Claire is an empty-nester alongside hubby Nick (Denis Leary). While she does All The Things, he sits in the garage, putting together a dollhouse that seems to require an engineering degree he clearly doesn’t possess. It’s a gift for their twin grandkids, soon to visit with their mother, Channing (Felicity Jones), Claire and Nick’s oldest offspring, a.k.a. the responsible one, and her goofy hubby Doug (Jason Schwartzman). The middle kid is Taylor (Chloe Grace Moretz), who shows up every year with a different girlfriend, this time, Donna (Devery Jacobs), introduced as DJ Sweatpants, which is a Gen Z joke! Kids these days! They like bad music and wear sloppy clothes! Please laugh! The youngest is Sammy (Dominic Sessa, depressingly far from new holiday classic The Holdovers), a slacker-type fresh off a breakup with his girlfriend (Maude Apatow). Across the street lives Claire’s archrival in Xmas decor and celebration perfection, Jeanne (Joan Chen), whose daughter Lizzie (Havana Rose Liu) might have just thrown a lingering glance in Sammy’s general direction.
Like any good suburban White lady living in an adorable, spaciously sprawling home, and whose surely considerable income is never even hinted at (maybe she and Nick are retired?), Claire worships an Oprah-Martha-style morning talk show host that airs at a time accessible only to people who don’t work, Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria), and good Christ on a cracker, there’s a ton of big names in this movie, isn’t there? I think that means the movie doesn’t suck 99 fruitcakes! All Claire wants is to enter a Zazzy-sponsored contest for the Best Christmas Mom Ever, but everyone in the family is just too self-involved to nominate her despite the fact that she does EVERYTHING for EVERYBODY ELSE. E.g., get tickets for the whole family to see a holiday dance extravaganza, and then gets left behind, and nobody notices until after the show starts. Whoops. And so, nearly halfway into the movie, the premise finally kicks in, and she snaps. By the way, the chupacabra thing is just a joke. Promise! I swear to god and the Holiest of Marys, and as always, hail St. Nick!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Oh. What. Fun. really wants to be a cross between home-for-the-holidays stuff like The Family Stone and looser, sillier flicks like classic Christmas Vacation or unclassic Christmas with the Kranks, with a nod to Home Alone.
Performance Worth Watching: Watching Pfeiffer try to corral her hastily sketched character, who careens wildly between relatably sweet and borderline wacko, might be unintentionally funny if it wasn’t at the expense of a beloved longtime actor who’s won us over a dozen-plus times during her Hollywood career.
Memorable Dialogue: A fellow underappreciated mom commiserates with Claire: “My stocking looks like a limp penis. No love. It just hangs there.”
A Holiday Tradition: Baked goods, prezzies, ugly sweaters, betinseled greenery, carols, stockings on fireplaces, lawn inflatables, deep-seated familial resentment boiling over into toxicity, Elf on a Shelf horrors – Christmas is fully intact here.
Does The Title Make Any Sense? It’s sarcasm, ya freakin’ moron. Especially when you take into account how much fun you’ll have while watching it.
Our Take: Per Claire, the only three words a mom wants to hear at Christmastime are… “Can I help?” That’s the joke! That’s also the theme of Oh. What. Fun., the punctuation asserting the cynical snark silently simmering beneath all the overly forced, peppermint bark-fueled mirth, here exaggerated so it makes a bigger noise when the protagonist makes it all go kablooey. One can really sense Pfeiffer struggling to center her character, and filmmaker Michael Showalter (Wet Hot American Summer, The Big Sick) shows little interest in helping out his protagonist with tighter writing or specific direction, thus adding a layer of irony to this dumbass movie. Are we supposed to sympathize with her, or believe she’s gotten a bit too kooky about Christmas? Moms get no respect from their families, neighbors or film directors, it seems.
The movie proceeds with the consistently nagging sense that none of the star-riddled cast deserves a shoddy screenplay content to be a decoupage of cliches cribbed from too many of the movies it directly references (A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story and several others get snippets of screentime here, a pinheaded miscalculation that inevitably leads to Oh. What. Fun. being the object of unfavorable comparisons). Showalter just doesn’t seem to care that much, his cast flailing for emotional handholds – especially Jones, who seems overwhelmed with the task of keeping this circus of nonsense grounded – and executing a tonally and thematically jumbled script, which might not be as objectionable if the jokes were funnier and the characters less canned.
One set piece finds Claire shoplifting from a notable mall store that gets unofficial promotional consideration; another features Sessa’s pointedly dreary performance of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas.’ There’s a level of desperation to the comedy here that’s more depressing than joyful. Typically funny folks like Moretz and Schwartzman do little more than fart around, Danielle Brooks drops in for a cameo that no-so-subtly extolls the virtues of being a delivery driver (please note which streaming service is premiering this movie), and Chen’s character is one joke begging to be something more than a Stepfordish stereotype. Oh. What. Fun. is a dried-out festive cheese log of a movie and any attempt to appreciate its sad stabs at humor is to bust your cracker in it every stinking time. Throw it out in the yard for chupacabra bait.
Our Call: Oh. What. Fun. jingle smells. SKIP IT.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! (At least, that’s what Andy Williams promised.) The holidays are a time to celebrate with family, friends, food, and, let’s not forget, fun things to watch. Whether you’re huddled up with the whole family in your living room or cozying up under the covers with your tablet, let Decider be your guide to all things festive this holiday season.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
Movie Reviews
1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy
by | May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 10:30 am EDT
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.
Dangerously Close
I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.
An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?
The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.
Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.
Fire with Fire
Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.
Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.
This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’
Last Resort
Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.
George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.
There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.
Short Circuit
Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?
NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.
Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.
His whole character is mystifying.
Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM
AFFECTION movie poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026
AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.
There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.
Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.
But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.
The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.
Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.
Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.
The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?
AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.
Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.
We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.
As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.
Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:
Deanna: ★★★★.5
Allison: ★★★.25
Julia: ★★
To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.
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