Next up is Father Christmas is Back, a 2021 ensemble British comedy drama that sells itself as a rude, risque sex comedy but feels more like one of those very safe sitcoms that used to be on telly on a Saturday teatime. You know the ones - they'd normally star folk like Kris Marshall and Caroline Quentin. Coincidentally, both feature here as members of a wildly dysfunctional wealthy British clan who reunite in a grand Yorkshire mansion for the holidays. However, this film has two very potent secret weapons - British national treasure John Cleese and American sitcom institution Kelsey Grammer. Both light up the screen, though neither is given much to get their formidable comic teeth into.
All in all, the film feels like a let-down, considering the calibre of cast they've got on board but, it’s still a hell of an easy watch. By now, I can absolutely guarantee that you could do a lot, lot worse than this. I watch this after having a bit of a silly, sleep-deprived tiff with the wife about not putting stuff in the right bin, so an easy watch really fits the bill to settle the temper. We make up right afterwards, don't worry.
Anyway, the extended Christmas family all gather for the holidays and all fall out with each other, as is the standard, before some big, juicy revelations and the usual festive cheer bring them all back closer together.
Elizabeth Hurley is Joanna, a child-hating, fashion columnist sexpot who sleeps around so much that she's hooked up with a different boyfriend to the one she told everyone she was with when she got invited. Talulah Riley's youngest sister Vicky is the standard-issue leather jacket-wearing, unrepentant boozy wild child. Naomi Frederick’s black sheep sister Paulina is a boringly one-note character who’s obsessed with The Beatles and can’t seem to talk about anything else. I thoroughly enjoy when someone points out to her that even The Fab Four themselves weren’t as interested in The Beatles as she is. I have an old friend who is an official ‘Ambassador for The Beatles’ and I think that he and Pauline would really get on.
Nathalie Cox’s Caroline and her sex-starved hubbie Petter (Marshall), our wealthy hosts for the holidays, are probably the closest thing to being the leads here and have a nice little double act going. They have a sweet, almost telepathic understanding, even when pissing each other off. Their relationship feels authentic and, dare I say it, familiar.
Family matriarch Elizabeth (Quentin) is now in a relationship with John (Cleese). It’s enormous fun to behold Cleese, now in his eighties, engaging in salacious verbal foreplay with a woman twenty years his junior and making it seem hot and believable.
The family fall-outs are all very so-so until long-lost dad James turns up, plumbing previously untapped depths of ill–feeling. Yes, it’s Grammer, who buggered off to America 27 years ago and has returned with Jackie (April Bowlby), a ditzy babe less than half his age. The film sets James up as the antagonist but it’s impossible to hate this guy - he’s just so darn Frasier charming, even if the way everyone acts towards him gives a very strong indication he’s done some appalling stuff.
Through some awkward dinners, a lively pub sing-song and a festive visit to a none-more-British country fair (complete with “cow pat bingo”) the family have various humorous spats and make-ups before the truth behind daddy dearest’s vanishing comes out.
Father Christmas is Back is very much like one of those big family-sized tubs of chocolates. It’s not good for you and there’s a few duds in there but you’re bound to find something to enjoy.
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