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Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays (dir. James Ferguson)
Happy Holidays is essentially one long diatribe spouted by three middle-aged men who have nothing better to do than bemoan their pathetic lives one Christmas in New England. Patrick (Paul Hungerford) is a gay dog groomer (and really, how can you get any gayer than that?) who wants to leave his partner of several years, for reasons that are never specified, and feels persecuted for his sexuality in his waspy hometown in Connecticut. He gets a late night phone call from Alden, (John B. Crye) who has recently converted to Judaism and broken up with his girlfriend because she’s not Jewish. Kirby (Thomas Rhoads) is a balding, hypocritical Catholic who decries homosexuality in the same breath that he admits to committing adultery. His father has just died so he’s in town for the funeral, which provides the backdrop for these three childhood friends to be united again. Their reunion consists of a lot of drinking, unearthing a time capsule that they buried their senior year of high school and bitching at each other. They do switch locations periodically, from a bar to a yarn store to their high school gymnasium, and after one particular skirmish they decide to play dodge ball (dodge ball!) but the dialogue is horribly repetitive and the characters read like thirteen year old girls arguing about what sequined tube top to buy at Forever 21.
While there were a few decent one-liners, (like when Alden talks about losing his faith: “I don’t pray, not even on Election day”) the humor comes off as forced—a series of zingers that have no place outside the realm of knock-knock joke comedy. And despite the fact that they squabble incessantly for an hour and forty minutes, they continue to spend insufferable amounts of time together. In reality, these people would never ever be friends and trying to pass their differing personalities off with quirky-opposites-attract appeal just doesn’t work. There’s a line where Kirby compares their unlikely friendships as the beginning of a joke: “A Catholic, a Jew and an atheist walk into a bar…” And they certainly are a joke, but the joke is on us, the unsuspecting viewers who are forced to endure their endless cuckolding without reprieve. And unless you live permanently in a1995 time warp, there is no longer an excuse to ever utter the line, “Can’t we all just get along?” I’m sorry but there just isn’t.
The theme of strained family relationships is certainly a well-tread upon holiday more, but Happy Holidays has nothing original to say on the subject. The acting is so-so, the dialogue often reads like a MySpace bulletin, and the score sounds like a remixed version of the theme song from Charles in Charge played on a Casio keyboard.
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