Happiest Season (2020)

Great watch, would watch again, and do recommend. There is a huge advantage in knowing as little as possible about a movie before watching it: mostly it removes expectations, and allows little surprises to delight you through the movie. I watched it because it was a Kristen Stewart movie, but was happily surprised to see Clea Duvall involved, and continually delighted to see familiar faces appear: Mary Holland, Alison Brie, and Aubrey Plaza especially. I'm honestly not familiar with "a lot" of "coming out of the closet, but not quite yet" stories, but I have seen a lot of "secrets for the holidays", and "don't tell my family x", and this is very interesting that it uses that concept to knock the wind out of the sails of the story so early. While the majority of the story is basically abuse humor, it's delivered in a way that manages to both garner sympathy for Abbie and be charmingly amusing. If the movie has a real downside, then it's that it tries to do (almost) too many things, but manages to pull it off. Yeah, I pretty much hate Harper, but that's by design, and she's a victim as much as a villain. The shift in stories as things all start to resolve is the "worst" part of it, but ultimately makes for a satisfying ending.