I don’t often cry in movie theaters. I shed a single tear when my favorite girl died in Avengers: Endgame. But, Last Christmas had me ugly crying in the theater. While I had heard it would rip out your heart and stomp on it, I figured I owed it to y’all to see it and tell you exactly how sad it was. My last spoiler-free conclusion is that you should see this movie if you like Hallmark movies, and if you don’t, check it out on a five-dollar movie night.
I cried all my eye makeup off. All of it.
Here is your last spoiler warning in the form of Henry Golding!
This movie follows Kate (Emilia Clarke), a struggling singer/elf in London. She basically gets kicked out of all her friends’ houses by being a nightmare roommate.
She also works in a year-round Christmas shop—which is apparently a real thing, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around what they do the other eleven months of the year—as the cynical elf to Michelle Yeoh’s angry Santa. Santa, of course, drops a bunch of hilarious one-liners like “I don’t have enough tinsel to cover your corpse” ~ Michelle Yeoh, our new rom-com queen!
Basically, homegirl is a hot mess. It causes a bunch of destruction before we find out she wasn’t always like this. She just kind of dropped the ball on everything she loves, which is a mood tbh.
Enter Tom
It’s Tom.
Tom (Henry Golding) is this fun guy who shows up outside the Christmas Store—seriously how do they stay in business the other eleven months?!?!—looking up at a weird bird? Kind of a weird dude, but we still love him.
They get to know each other quickly enough, with Tom leading Kate on the path to not sucking as a person (we’ve all been there hon) and Kate catching some feels for him (can you blame her though?). They have a sweet moment where we learn why she was such a nightmare. Turns out, Kate had gotten very sick and needed a heart transplant last Christmas—
oh no!
CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HOLD ME LIKE THIS
At this point, I once again started to believe in love, which for a cynic who devours rom-coms to give her any feelings about men in general, was very promising.
Then a bunch of bad stuff happens and we find out that TOM got hit by a bus and gave Kate his heart when he DIED. It was in the TITLE—LAST CHRISTMAS, I GAVE you my HEART.
Go ahead and take a minute to process that. I’ll be right here.
.
.
.
Now that we got the small emotional breakdown out of the way, a lot of the stuff makes more sense.
1. When Tom asks, “How are you getting home?”
Kate: “The bus”
Tom *visible feelings*
2. He’s always wearing the same outfit (even though it’s pretty fly)
3. The song literally told us FROM THE BEGINNING
4. He never reacts with anyone else AND steps around them so weird
Back to the plot—(yes, there’s MORE)
When Kate confronts him about being dead, he admits it. Not much else homeboy can really do here, but then he says the words that actually made me cry.
“It would have been yours anyway.”
During all this, Kate has been volunteering at the same homeless shelter Tom did before HE GOT HIT BY A BUS!
They do a little show to raise money, and she is finally able to get in front of a room full of people and sing. This is her little happy ending (and it’s implied that the cutie volunteer with the little crush on her might get a chance after all) but more importantly, she fixes her own heart and starts living.
The ending was very satisfying to watch, even though we miss Henry Golding and his little skip dance.
My friend had one contribution to this review (other than dragging me home when I was a mess).
“Does this mean chivalry is dead?” ~Rita Rybus
This movie reinforced the idea that I’ll never find love. He’ll get hit by a bus or he already got hit by the bus and is trying to help me get my life together, or (worst of all), he likes sauerkraut.
Don’t mind me, I’m just over here listening to the soundtrack on Spotify and drinking fancy apple cider out of the bottle.
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