On Christmas three lifelong friends embark on a mission round New York City to try to find a very exclusive party they have always dreamed of attending.
The film turned into something different what I originally expected in all honesty. It had a lot more about it than I anticipated, going pretty deep at times. So when Ethan’s parents are killed in a car crash this is the start of him spending Christmas with his new family in Isaac and Chris. This was then a tradition each year as they tried to find the very exclusive Nutcracker Ball. This year’s Christmas Eve was very different though, as it was going to be the last one the three of them were going to spend together. Isaac is going to become a first time father, Chris is a rather famous footballer and Ethan well he was stuck in a rut.
We get plenty of reasons to laugh from start to finish in the film even if parts of the story are pretty sad, I think it did well to show how young men would act with certain situations. Something which I thought was pretty nice to watch, even if the outcome and solution was to get very drunk. That is what people do in real life isn’t it!
The three main characters were very well cast and I thought it was especially good to see Anthony Mackie in a comedy film. We know what we are going to get with Seth Rogan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt now and they certainly don’t disappoint in this film. Michael Shannon as the rather strange ex-high school teacher offers some very amusing moments as well. Everything that you could possibly think going wrong on a night out pretty much does in this film, plenty of moments with mobile phones or should I say smart phones. That is certainly something that people have to deal with now.
Not normally a film I would expect to like as comedy is my least favorite genre, but I seem to like Seth Rogan for some reason. Yes really I am not entirely sure why myself. But it really does have some good moments and a little bit of a different approach to the more recent Christmas comedy films we have been subjected to in the last few years.
It might just go a little bit over the top with the because it’s Christmas approach but nowhere near the level of Love Actually (which I actually love now). Anything that creeps over the sentimental line is very swiftly then laughed at or it doesn’t quite work out the way the film universe would normally take it. Not going to elaborate on that as don’t want to spoil any parts of the film. I would recommend this if you fancy something that is Christmas based, but not too much in your face with some laughs along the way.
