In Happy Christmas Anna Kendrick plays Jenny a young twenty something who comes to stay with her brother for the holidays after a break up. The director Joe Swanberg casts himself as her brother Jeff. His wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) is reluctant to have Jenny stay with them and their infant son, knowing her "wild" behavior. Her first night there Jenny goes to a party with her friend Carson (Lena Dunham) and gets hammered drunk. So much to where she needs to be picked up and is unable to babysit like she promised the following day. Stepping in for the babysitting we meet Kevin, (Mark Webber) your friendly neighborhood babysitter, musician and small time pot dealer. Jenny and Kevin soon spark up a romance. Jenny then tries to repair her earlier wrongs with her sister in law, Kelly by helping her get back into writing and shaking off the doldrums of being a stay at home mom. Together with her friend Cason, the three girls try to collaborate on a trashy romance novel.I liked Drinking Buddies, the director Joe Swanberg's previous film. If anything it was fun to see a little behind the scenes of a craft beer business and see Ron Livingston in an indie film. Happy Christmas is a disappointing follow up. The title is incidental, this is not a Christmas movie. Unless you like to watch unfunny, non-irreverent holiday family dysfunction. The film is very low budget, think early 90's independent films. Grainy film stock and a ton of unfunny, what seems like ad-libbed dialog. The director takes to the old indie film look like a hipster listening to vinyl records. Just to be pretentious. I appreciate independent film as much as the next guy, this just doesn't have anything to be enthusiastic about. Lena Dunham tries to add her own bit of irreverence to this movie. But as each disappointingly unfunny new season of HBO's Girls comes out, I am becoming increasingly aware that it was Judd Apatow's influence in season one that gave it good, not Lena. If you are fan crushing on Anna Kendrick or you are looking for a new Christmas classic, don't bother. Anna Kendrick's usual adorable charming spark is dulled to a faint glimmer like that of a tiny Christmas tree light on the saddest of Charlie Brown trees. Even for the minimal effort this film takes to watch on Netflix it isn't worth the time.If you enjoyed this review, please check out my blog at yourturntopick.com

"Mr. Pants is here, Mr. Pants would disapprove."-JennyOkay i'm not going to lie and pretend that i was very excited to see this movie, i mean it got some decent buzz back in the beginning of the year at the "Sundance Film Festival" but after that i was basically forgotten. This is from the same guy who directed last year's Drinking Buddies, a pretty good movie that's probably regarded as one of 2013's best independent films. Though Swanberg's(the director) last picture was surprisingly decent as i said i still just couldn't be bumped to see this one even though it had decent critic love, i mean it's hard to get excited for something that has no publicity and the marketing that it has is trash, i mean that has to be one of the worst looking posters i have seen and the sappy name Happy Christmas didn't help either.Happy Christmas is Directed by Joe Swanberg and it stars Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham and Joe Swanberg. "Irresponsible 20-something Jenny arrives in Chicago to live with her older brother Jeff, a young film-maker living a happy existence with his novelist wife Kelly and their two-year-old son. Jenny's arrival shakes up their quiet domesticity as she and her friend Carson instigate an evolution in Kelly's life and career. Meanwhile, Jenny strikes up a rocky relationship with the family's baby sitter- cum- pot dealer."Well thankfully Happy Christmas is not as terrible or out of place as it's marketing, Jesus that poster is just bad, but it's still far from being anything great, this is one of those pictures that's a good time but ultimately is unmemorable and i will have forgotten this one by the end of the week(probably being a little bit generous).Drinking Buddies was one of last year's most talked about independent films, it was up there with something like Frances Ha in terms of talk but the fact is that i now realize that after having been released for over 90 days the movie only grossed a disgustingly low 343.000. dollars. An independent picture that was such a success critically and talked about only earned that! That's explains the why Joe Swanberg, wasn't able to move to something bigger because this film's budget has to be much lower than his previous work. The budget must have been really but really small, you can see that by it's run-time and by it's technical quality that's rather unimpressive.But for such a small budgeted, little and limited picture Joe Swanberg is still able to offer it's audience something that's far from being terrible, by all means, Happy Christmas is never dramatically powerful and to say the truth there are not a lot of legitimate laughs in here but it's a film that's always able to be entertaining and it manages to keep a smile on our faces for the grand majority of it's run-time.Happy Christmas is a movie that ultimately never surprises it's audience and it never really stands out but it also doesn't let you down. Again it's not ever that funny but it's always at least amusing, the performers here are lovable and real and that's probably the film's biggest stand out, the fact that it manages to sell these characters as real people, and because they are real people, we oddly seem to relate to them and be engaged by their stories and about what they have to say, though they at times seem short on things that they have to say.Again you wont find anything memorable nor one of the year's best pictures in this movie, but Happy Christmas is certainly an entertaining and amusing enough of a watch, you wont regret if you see it i think, it's a movie that's easy to follow during it's short 80 minutes run-time but unfortunately also easy to forget.Rating.C

One of my favorite films from last year was Drinking Buddies, which proved director and screenwriter Joe Swanberg's talent to transcend the "mumblecore" genre through a realistic and universal story which reached levels of emotional honesty we rarely find in dramas of a higher profile. His most recent film, Happy Christmas, is another "slice of life" which is simple on its shape but complex on its depth, thanks to the mutable dynamics between the main characters and the brilliant performances which reach that magic balance between improvisation and structure that immediately captures us into their experiences, and gradually invites us to discover the deepness hidden by their frivolous lives. Swanberg establishes tense and filled with emotion situations which he abandons before reaching the "dramatic climax" which seemed unavoidable. As a consequence, the scene provokes the desired impact, and at the same time, keeps a subtleness and spontaneity which might have been sacrificed in a more conventional film, where the climax of the scene is considered an end in itself, instead of working as one more step in the evolution of the characters. That's a risky strategy which couldn't be faced by any actor, but fortunately, Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham and the great Melanie Lynskey make a perfect work, and they bring weight to those prosaic moments which should be irrelevant, but which end up revealing themselves as keys in their characters' humanity. On the negative side, Happy Christmas didn't leave me totally satisfied, and I liked it much less than Drinking Buddies. As I said, Swanberg's strategy is omitting stuff, but sometimes, he omits too much, including a concrete and cathartic ending which would have validated all the family tension we had been witnessing. The ambiguity of a sudden ending can work when it comes at the appropriate time; but in the case of Happy Christmas, it feels like an arbitrary interruption; an escape, instead of a planned resolution. I'm not asking for a "big gesture" or a forced happy ending to close the movie, but I definitely feel that Swanberg could have found a better moment to abandon the characters, without leaving us the impression that the memory card of the digital camera was filled and he said: "Well, let's leave it there. Good job, team!". That ending left me with quite a bitter taste, and it's the main reason why I wasn't left completely satisfied by this film. Nevertheless, that doesn't remove the movie's pros, and I can give it a moderate recommendation mainly because of its sober narrative and excellent performances. However, I think Drinking Buddies is a much better option than Happy Christmas; it also ends abruptly, but at least we know where the characters are heading, and that information is enough for us to tie the loose ends and to feel satisfied.

Not since Drinking Buddies have I seen an Anna Kendrick film and this saddens me in such a way. For, while she may not have the profile of some of her contemporaries like Emma Stone or Jennifer Lawrence, just she has carved herself a nice niche in the film industry. Mostly with her being in quality indie films, or just films which come out of nowhere like Pitch Perfect. Leading to the question if this film is another one of those under the radar films worth watching?Characters & StorySomewhere in Chicago lives a well-adjusted family comprised of Jeff (Joe Swanberg), Kelly (Melanie Lynskey), and baby Jude (Jude Swanberg). Jeff is some sort of film maker, and Kelly is a homemaker who has a book published. But as she watches Jeff go outside the home and work, and she has but Jude and the house to tend to, there rises this almost envy of needing to get dressed and go somewhere on a daily basis. So when Jeff's little sister Jenny (Anna Kendrick) needs somewhere to stay after breaking up with her boyfriend, she seems like a god send. However, with Jenny not mature enough to really take on the load Kelly would like her to, it does bring to question what can she bring to the table? Something Jenny struggles with as she tries to find her place in what already seems to be a tight-knit little family.PraiseWhen it comes to this film, it is more certain scenes than the film as a whole which deserve praise. Such as a conversation Jenny, Kelly, and Carson (Lena Dunham) have in which Kelly speaks on her issues with being a stay at home mom and how complicated her feelings are about the job. And also there is another good scene which deals with Jenny and Carson helping Kelly write her next book.CriticismBut, as a whole, this movie keeps things relatively low key which makes the film really boring. For one, nobody is that interesting of a character. Albeit Jeff has this sort of Marshal, from How I Met Your Mother, type persona, but with no one getting any sort of back-story to liven them up, it becomes far too set in realism to be appealing. Then, on top of the characters being dull, the story itself doesn't invigorate things. For not only does nothing seriously happen, but even in the few prized moments which help push you toward finishing the movie there aren't any performances which truly liven up either the characters or the movie.And really, it is sad how only two scenes actually get your attention in a film a little over an hour. Making it seem so strange that the same person who made this film directed and wrote Drinking Buddies. For while Drinking Buddies was so good it should have been a pilot to a series, this feels like an indie short which somehow got the funding to be extended until a full-length movie. One which probably only die-hard fans of those involved will know about for this film highlights why Video on Demand exists. Because the names maybe recognizable, and usually trust worthy, but theaters know they won't make any real money off this.Overall: Skip ItWith this film, there aren't a lot of redeeming values to it. For while I liked the conversation Kelly has with Jenny and Carson about the issues she sometimes has with being a stay at home mother, as well as a conversation about writing erotica sans the words penis and pussy, the film as a whole just doesn't have a selling point besides Kendrick and Dunham's name. Hence why this is being labeled as a "Skip It" for it really does feel like Swanberg probably used bits of his life to create a movie which maybe could have worked as a short, but instead became a full length motion picture extended past the capabilities of its premise.