Best movie of this year hands down!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One reviewer said: "you will love it or you will hate it." Boy, ain't that the truth. It's not the best movie I've even seen. It's not even the best Christmas movie I've seen. But it's different from anything I've even seen before, and buddy that's saying something.I'd say check it out if it's the sort of thing that you think might interest you. To be fair, I feel I should add the I am a fan of the director, Joe Swanberg, but I can assure you that my reviews are completely unbiased.

I don't know if this was supposed to be art or just some kind of lets just throw it out there and see where it goes because we have money and time to burn. It was a pointless drama I kept waiting for the epiphany and it never came. If you want to get high and have something on in the background than sure turn this on but it's not even interesting. There is no value in this picture and I can usually find something good in the smallest places. This was just white people being white. I mean there is no other way to describe it except that. The best character in the whole movie was the baby. I don't have anything else to say about this movie except don't watch it.

Joe Swanberg who wrote, directed and played one of the leading roles in this his latest film is known for his improvisational independent films. Although I liked, as other reviewers have noted his recent movie "Drinking Buddies", I felt this film's improvisations failed in that the dialogue was too stilted, awkward, and filled with what appeared to be inside jokes that the cast would laugh at, ignoring basically the viewers that were watching. Thus the whole thing just got more and more annoying for me as it progressed.The plot centers on the loving couple of Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) and Jeff Spelling (Swanberg) and their adorable son Jude welcoming to their home, in Chicago around Christmas time, Jeff's sister Jenny (Anna Kendrick), after she just broke up with her boyfriend. Once Jenny enters the scene, they'll be a lot of scenes involving pot smoking, drinking, sex, and explicit sex talk. They'll be other plot elements involving Jenny's irresponsibility and her attempts along with her friend Carson (Lena Dunham) to convince Kelly to devote more time to her writing and to get help with the raising of her son.All in all, as mentioned, I just felt the improvisational approach here just didn't work, and the movie ended up having little entertainment value for me.

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.