Stream It or Skip It: ‘Happiest Season’ on Hulu Is a Queer Christmas Miracle

Happiest Season is a groundbreaking holiday romcom from director Clea DuVall. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis star as a couple running an intense holiday gauntlet in a small-ish town. The all-star cast includes Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Daniel Levy, Mary Steenburgen, and Victor Garber. But beyond all the hype and excitement, is Happiest Season a new Christmas classic? 

HAPPIEST SEASON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Abby and Harper have it all: they’re young, in love, and living life to the fullest. That’s why Harper, swept up in the emotions of the holiday season, invites Abby to spend Christmas back home with her family. Harper wants to show her Christmas-indifferent girlfriend that the holiday can be magical if you spend it with someone you love. There’s just one major catch: uh, Harper isn’t exactly totally kinda not really at all out to her parents. Or her sisters. Or anyone in her family. That big red light isn’t Rudolph’s nose, Abby—it’s a stoplight! Get out while you can!

But Harper makes a promise: she’s definitely going to tell her highly-critical, affluent, social-climbing parents right after Christmas. Abby reasons, “It’s five days. How bad can it be?” Girl, that is the one question you do not want to ask in a holiday romcom!

This is how bad it is: they have to pretend to be roommates (which is a triggering word for every queer person, let me tell you!), they sleep in separate bedrooms, Harper’s parents keep calling Abby an orphan, there are too many traditions and errands to keep up with, and Harper’s endless parade of relatives and old friends and exes keep popping up. The stakes are even higher, too, because Harper’s dad (Victor Garber) is running for mayor and trying to impress a major donor (Ana Gasteyer). That’s enough drama to make the Griswolds and Parkers crack—and those characters weren’t also keeping a major, personal secret!

Can Abby and Harper make it all five days—and should they try to make it all five days?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The big family Christmas vibes are very similar to, say, a Family Stone or a holiday edition of Meet the Parents. There’s a more subtle influence, though, that you might pick up on if you’re obsessed with Christmas movies: the work of John Hughes. Director DuVall, cinematographer John Guleserian, and production designer Theresa Guleserian have created a film that looks and feels like it exists in the same universe as Home Alone or Christmas Vacation. There’s a cozy luxury to the Caldwell home, and there’s a loving glow to every shot. This movie feels nostalgic even as you’re watching it, like it’s an old favorite. That’s a powerful visual statement for a queer Christmas movie to make, too. It acknowledges that we’ve always been here celebrating, and now we get to take up space in the Christmas canon.

Performance Worth Watching: What performance isn’t worth watching? Kristen Stewart is an old Hollywood-style movie star through and through, able to command attention and elicit emotions from viewers without saying a single word. Seriously, there’s a shot of her during the White Elephant gift exchange that will leave you breathless because of just how much her cool radiates off the screen. Aubrey Plaza and Daniel Levy steal every scene they’re in, as Harper’s high school ex and Abby’s BFF, respectively. Mackenzie Davis has the hardest task in the movie as she tries to keep the audience from turning on Harper, a character that basically tricked her girlfriend back into the closet for Christmas. It’s an impossible mission, and she succeeds thanks to the power of her performance and this impeccable, empathetic script.

But of all the standouts in this standout cast, co-writer Mary Holland stands out as Harper’s bewildering sister Jane. She’s the oddball of the family, with an elaborate fantasy world in her head and an overeagerness to fix any and every technical problem in the Caldwell house. She’s a bit like the Dwight Schrute, if you liked Dwight and if Dwight possessed even a shred of empathy. After years playing the guest star, this is Holland’s breakout role. All I want for Christmas 2021 is for Mary Holland to have her own TV show.

Memorable Dialogue: When Abby tells her friend about the whole pretending-to-be-straight thing, Daniel Levy has some of the funniest reactions in recent memory. For example: “Yeah, I mean, there’s nothing more erotic than concealing your authentic selves!” We gotta give it up to Levy in this movie, who performs the majority of his role while separated from the main cast, presumably talking into a sleeping cell phone. He delivers comedy gold in every scene.

A Holiday Tradition: Among many rituals, the Caldwells have to take a family portrait in front of the family tree—a task that takes on significantly more importance now Harper’s dad’s Instagram is part of a mayoral campaign. There’s also the annual White Elephant gift exchange, which takes place on Christmas Eve.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: Just like most of Hallmark’s holiday offerings, Happiest Season’s title is very vague. If they wanted to really highlight the LGBTQ angle, it could’ve been called Coming Out for Christmas. Even Make the Yuletide Gay would work! But I think the title Happiest Season is perfect because it doesn’t underscore the lesbian romance at the heart of the movie. The movie does that itself; it doesn’t need the title to do any heavy lifting there. Instead, the title Happiest Season fits right in with that aforementioned Christmas canon I was talking about. That’s the way it should be.

Our Take: I’m just going to echo my colleague Anna Menta’s review and say, yeah, this movie is perfect. It’s beyond perfect; it’s remarkable in every way, from the performances down to the script. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much to get me excited about a holiday movie with gays in it. Just the tiniest nod to the existence of gay people, like in Hallmark’s Christmas with the Darlings, will make me feel merry. So really just by existing, Happiest Season was already a winner with me.

But like Santa’s sleigh flying over a skyline, Happiest Season soared above my expectations. This isn’t just representation, which the community desperately needs; it’s smart, heartfelt, sincere, messy, nuanced representation—and it’s damn funny, too.

Truthfully, watching Happiest Season is perhaps the closest I have ever felt to rekindling the magic of seeing The Avengers for the first time as a lifelong Marvel fan. Like my decades of love for those comic book heroes, I’ve lived a life with all the gay moments in this movie��having a “roommate,” anxiously weighing coming out options, sneaking away from the family to do even the tiniest gay anything—and have never seen them on screen before, not all together, not teaming up to form something bigger than I ever thought I’d see. But here they are—all the nuances of the gay experience, especially the gay holiday experience, teaming up on the (depending on the size of your TV) big screen. When the credits rolled, I just sobbed. Which is also similar to how I reacted to The Avengers.

Happiest Season irreversibly changes the holiday romcom genre, just by being a major studio film telling a queer story that was made by queer people for queer people. But I think what actually makes this movie remarkable, what’s actually going to change movies forever, is just how good it is… period. It’s not good for a romcom, or for an LGBTQ film, or for a Christmas movie. It’s a film where the passion to make this movie and make it right lives in every single frame. It’s obvious that everyone involved—literal generations of gay actors, from Daniel Levy to Victor Garber!—knew exactly how much this movie would ultimately mean to an underserved audience, and they all committed harder than ever. The joy in this movie can’t be denied, and that joy was written into the script.

DuVall and Holland’s script makes Happiest Season the flat-out funniest character-driven comedy of the year. You will be laughing out loud, steadily and thoroughly, thus opening you up to some of the rawest, realest Character Moments ever depicted in a holiday film. The movie gets jokes out of Alison Brie’s uptight housewife/artisanal gift-basketeer, or Holland’s kooky Jane. But by the end of the movie, every character feels real—like they’re the leads of their own Christmas movies unfolding between the scenes of Abby and Harper’s.

It’s been a long time since we all inducted Love, Actually and Elf into the Christmas canon. Now it’s Happiest Season’s turn.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Happiest Season is a Christmas miracle.

Stream Happiest Season on Hulu