Early on in Oh. What. Fun., Michelle Pfeiffer’s Claire Clauster points out that most Christmas movies are about men, particularly fathers, while women/moms are relegated to limited screen time even as they work hard to give their families some Christmas magic. With limited success, Oh. What. Fun. attempts to re-balance the scales by offering the story of a mother’s hijinks over the holiday season.
Oh. What. Fun. comes from director Michael Showalter, who’s made a career on films like The Idea of You, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and The Big Sick, all of which attempt to tap into real human emotion while injecting levity into sometimes serious, sometimes ridiculous situations. Showalter co-wrote the script with Chandler Baker, an author whose books were spotlighted in Reese Witherspoon and Good Morning America‘s book clubs, and which make her an authority on the experiences of mothers during the holidays.
However, Oh. What. Fun. squanders any kind of goodwill it earns in Pfeiffer’s harangue about Christmas movies by delivering a film that not only fails to live up to its unique premise, but tells a story about unlikable people who are largely miserable by their own making. It’s a mediocre Christmas movie that may appeal to a select audience, but falls short of being a rousing, mom-centric crowd-pleaser.
Oh. What. Fun. Tries And Fails To Offer A New Kind Of Christmas Movie
Perhaps the biggest problem of Oh. What. Fun. is that there’s too much going on. While the main plot of the film is about Pfeiffer’s Claire going to great lengths to plan a wonderful holiday for her family, there’s also a performative feud with her neighbor Jeanne Wang-Wasserman (Joan Chen), an obsession with talk show host Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria), and a short-lived kinship with delivery driver Morgan (Danielle Brooks).
Beyond Claire, there are subplots with varying degrees of success. Claire’s husband Nick (Denis Leary) struggles to build a toy dream house to humorous effect, and her youngest, Sammy (Dominic Sessa), deals with a recent breakup in fun fashion. However, there’s a strangely mean dynamic between middle child Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) and the eldest Clauster child’s husband Doug (Jason Schwartzman) that is resolved quickly with clichéd platitudes.
The biggest misstep of Oh. What. Fun. is what’s presumably meant to be the emotional heart of the film, which is Claire’s relationship with her eldest daughter Channing (Felicity Jones). This dynamic has the most screen time devoted to it, but it’s so underdeveloped that it’s easily resolved in a handful of therapy-speak lines that don’t even make sense for the characters. The movie’s runtime is so split that it can’t be bothered to truly unpack their relationship, leaving Oh. What. Fun. feeling emotionally hollow.
Where Oh. What. Fun. occasionally shines is in some of its oddball humor, whether that’s a scene where a frazzled Claire dances on Zazzy Tims’ show or when she ends up bonding with a group of women over the immense pressure mothers face during Christmas. There’s certainly some laughs to be had, though not as many as the filmmakers likely intended.
All told, Oh. What. Fun. doesn’t succeed in delivering the kind of holiday movie it promises during Pfeiffer’s introduction. Or, at least, it delivers it far too late. The kind of performative, superficial family portrayed in the film is a hallmark of Christmas movies of old, but it doesn’t ring true in today’s day and age, even with attempts to modernize the family through the token gay daughter.
Further, the trite message of the movie — summed up in the line “Family forgives, no matter what” — seems likely to cause more harm than help for many audience members. In an era where generations are attempting to break the cycles of toxic or unhealthy behavior upheld by their families, Oh. What. Fun. lags behind. It attempts to modernize the typical Christmas movie, and instead just offers more of the same.
Oh. What. Fun. could’ve been an incisive and compelling examination of a mother’s role in Christmas, but it’s little more than a mean-spirited, rarely funny story about a family that never really comes together for the holidays. Showalter and Baker may have set out to give a mother a chance to be the lovable, hapless hero of a holiday movie, but it’s only mothers like Claire Clauster who will enjoy Oh. What. Fun.
- Release Date
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December 2, 2025
- Director
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Michael Showalter
- Writers
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Chandler Baker, Michael Showalter
- Producers
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Jane Rosenthal, Kate Churchill, Jordana Mollick, Michael Showalter, Berry Welsh
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Michelle Pfeiffer
Claire Clauster
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