In one of the more amusingly uncharitable moments of a character whose brittle undercarriage keeps peeking through the fastidiously composed veneer of the warm, welcoming homemaker, Mary Steenburgen says as her daughter's guest for the holidays stomps angrily out of the room, "She is very heavy-footed." Fortunately, the opposite applies to co-writer and director Clea DuVall; her light touch with both comedy and drama is essential to what makes Happiest Season so captivating.
The movie's conventional nature turns out to be a virtue, staking a queer claim on an American Christmas tradition in which LGBTQ characters have long been relegated to the sidelines.
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