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Critics reviews

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Joe Swanberg United States, 2014
BFI
As [Kendrick] begins to make a touchingly convincing connection with her disapproving sister-in-law, the film reveals itself as the work of an altogether wiser, more mature filmmaker than the restless young provocateur behind Hannah Takes the Stairs.
August 10, 2015
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The subtext is potent—despite their differences, you feel Jenny and Kelly's shared sense of stasis—and it's a pleasure to watch two performers as talented as Kendrick and Lynskey explore such tricky emotional territory... But in the end, inconsequence wins out. Swanberg is good at futzing with our moment-to-moment expectations, but he can't shape all these well-acted scenes into a satisfying whole. This is a pleasingly discursive movie that would benefit from meandering its way to a point.
July 29, 2014
Swanberg's films have grown into a reliable relief from the competitive, dehumanizing freneticism of much of American culture, marked as they are by an affirming and understated sense of decency. In a typical underachiever comedy, the middle class might be vilified so as to flatter a disenfranchised notion of unearned rebellion, but in Happy Christmas you see that Jeff and Kelly are prone to the same doubts as Jenny.
July 27, 2014
Once you've invited a group of actors to improvise a film from scratch, it's not easy to tell them—or even to admit to yourself—that it just isn't working. That's the most likely explanation, at any rate, for how something as painfully inconsequential as Joe Swanberg's Happy Christmas has found its way in front of a potential paying audience. Nobody involved ever came up with an idea or character remotely worth exploring...
July 24, 2014
The premise may suggest a bland sitcom, though Swanberg's directorial perspective feels less complacent than usual. His stance toward his characters seems to be maturing from shrugging acceptance into active sympathy, and his editing is getting sharper as well (some of the scenes actually display a sense of comic timing).
July 23, 2014
Tame for a Swanberg picture (not much sex or nudity), the film still retains some endearing mumblecore traits: accuracy of dialogue; naturalistic, semi-improvised performances; the fraught relationships (sexual, parasexual, familial, emotional) between thirty-something folks now moving closer to the impending deadline of forty.
March 23, 2014
Swanberg's movies live and die by the improvised inspiration of who's in them. Here there's a scene between Kendrick, Lynskey, and Lena Dunham, who plays a friend of Kendrick, that gets into the alleged injustice of being a stay-at-home mom. Kendrick and Dunham's characters don't have kids, so they have the luxury of preaching feminism. But it's a funny conversation, fueled by alcohol, that pushes the movie open.
January 22, 2014