There’s a ton of rom-coms out there, this holiday season we were finally blessed with one featuring a little LGBTQIA+ representation. 

“Happiest Season”, a Hulu original, was directed by Clea DuVall, a fitting director for the film. And while the film came out Nov. 25, in the movie you might notice that the characters weren’t exactly out yet. 

This movie embodies the vine “and they were roommates,” as the happy couple Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) travel home to Harper’s family for the holidays. But there’s  one tiny problem, Harper has not told her family she’s dating abby or that she’s gay. 

So upon arrival, Harper tells her family that Abby is just her roommate, and claims that Abby is also straight. This throws a real curveball at Abby since she was planning to ask Harper to marry her on Christmas day. 

Some of Harper’s exes make an appearance, including her parents forcing her to reconnect with an old high school boyfriend. They also run into Harper’s first girlfriend, Riley (Aubrey Plaza), who explains to Abby how their relationship was hard too because Harper wasn’t out. 

Riley and Abby hung out for a little bit as Harper was blowing Abby off and hanging out with her ex-boyfriend. 

Harper’s whole family was upper class and had a lot of high expectations of their children. Harper’s other two sisters were in town and all of them did anything they could to impress their parents, which was the main reason Harper wasn’t out yet. 

In general, Hulu originals are more mature than Netflix originals. Hulu seems to target an older mid-30s crowd. I guess you could say that Hulu could write a Netflix original but Netflix couldn’t write a Hulu original.

One of the best characters in the movie was Abby’s gay best friend, John (Daniel Levy) while he wasn’t featured a lot, he brought more than enough to the table with his phone calls with Abby and coming to help her at the end. He always had something comical to say.

I feel there aren’t a lot of LGBTQIA+ representation within Christmas movies, and finally they are giving the viewers what they want. But my only issue with this is that for over half the movie the characters were forced back into the closet. And no one ever wants to relive their coming out experiences. 

While I was hoping for Abby to get with Riley, but only because Aubrey Plaza deserves the whole world. Like Plaza should be in every single movie to exist, they would all be just a little better.

The cast of this movie was just amazing, while the writing was stale at times, like when everyone brought up Abby being an orphan multiple times in random situations. But not a lot of things in this movie felt forced, which can be a problem in rom-com cheesy movies.

The movie was great, I do wish there was more out of the closet aspects but I did enjoy the ending once Harper was able to find her way. 

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars