“Merry Good Enough” (2023) starts in Boston on December 22 and follows Lucy (Raye Spielberg) as she heads to her mom’s home in the suburbs for Christmas. Mom, Carol (Susan Gallagher), is preparing a little late for her kids’ visit. Carol’s son and Lucy’s brother, Tim (Daniel Desmarais), has already arrived from Singapore. Sister and youngest daughter, Cynthia (Comfort Clinton), is on her way. Lucy is a bit of a scrooge and not looking forward to the holidays, but neighbor and former, classmate Sam (Sawyer Spielberg), is also visiting from California. When Mom disappears, they balance celebrating and finding her without drawing too much attention. Will they ever come together?
I’ve never seen a Hallmark movie, but “Merry Good Enough” may be the independent film version of a slightly more realistic Hallmark movie because of delusions of dysfunction. The characters are a bit underwritten, and the family is supposed to be dysfunctional because the parents are divorced, and most of the kids live far away, but that feels normal in the twenty-first century at least on the East Coast. There is a good story in here somewhere, and despite the characters being severely underwritten, it has flashes that work.
Lucy is supposed to be the protagonist who dodges office festivities and judges her Mom. Other than being a divorced sourpuss, a fact that could be missed if a viewer is not paying attention at a couple of lines of dialogue that are retroactively important, it is hard to get a sense of her as a person. What does she do for a living? Wears a black coat and carries a black bookbag so a serious profession? She maybe blames Mom for how she turned out and tries to fix Mom by suggesting how she should live her life in the most superficial ways. While fixing people is one of my unfortunate hobbies that I try to refrain from engaging in, I don’t blame Mom for hightailing it. Raye is married to Sawyer in real life so you can be relieved that the actors are not siblings, so their characters are not incestuously playing out the city career girl meeting the hometown boy turned man. Phew. Still, it feels very Neal McDonough coded-can’t play a role where the character kisses anyone but the real-life spouse, which is fine if you can make that work. If the actors’ names sound familiar, yes, Sawyer is the son of Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw. As a love interest, he passes the gut check with plenty of green flags: hot, in touch with his emotions, likes everyone’s mom, not just his own, and always throwing out garbage or retrieving lost objects and people.
The protagonist should have been Carol. Codirector and writer Caroline Keene and codirector Dan Kennedy drop enough clues that Carol has depression, and Gallagher imbues her with enough life that she conveys more to her character than was on the page. She clearly loves her kids and does not try to put her crap on them so when they irritate her, she finds ways around it or confronts kindly. She has given up the act of appearing fully functional but also is not quite the mess that everyone sees. A prophet is not welcome in her own home, and the few glimpses of how she lives away from her family suggests that with a change in surroundings and abandoning all obligations, she could find a way to live well. If “Merry Good Enough” followed her escapades after she ran away from home, it could be a new classic, but the film’s momentum is for the family to appreciate each other.
“Merry Good Enough” feels as if it is missing connective tissue. Everyone makes fun of Tim’s beard as if it is a sign that he is in crisis. He looks fine. He is another ill-defined character most notable for living abroad and having an ex-girlfriend turned police officer, Kate (Sophie von Hasselberg). He is laid back but not quite to the point of weaponized incompetence. Cynthia is more of a trope—she is the high achieving lawyer trying to impress their Dad, George (Joel Murray), a big city TV guy. Instead of fixing Mom, Cynthia makes Mom do fun things and tells everyone what to do. She also may need a dictionary because she does not seem to know how to define pep.
Jovial Dad seems to think that his daughters are as crazy as the Mom but maybe it is just sexism because at that point in the movie, no one resembles anyone in this family though maybe Lucy bears some resemblance to her Mom if squinting is involved. Cynthia is also too embarrassed of her family to introduce her boyfriend to them. When George arrives, Murray, Bill’s baby brother, is dancing as fast as he can to make it seem as if the characters have chemistry, but it feels forced though it leads to some montages of the family enjoying each other’s company. Maybe Mom should leave more often. Everyone seems happier with that single change.
“Merry Good Enough” does not read the room and is determined not to let the viewers derive that lesson. The filmmakers are too scared to get uncomfortable and try to keep things light, which is where the Hallmark vibe comes in. There are no real consequences or difficult moments that last for more than a few seconds before the proceedings barrel forward to the next plot point. All dangling threads get tied together in a neat red bow thus suggesting that the alleged dysfunction is all for quirks and practically winks at the audience. Thirty years of not dealing with deep family issues can be resolved in one Christmas. Amazing. Mom should go missing more often.
The real unofficial MVP of “Merry Good Enough” is Susan Baxter (Margaret Curry). Though Keene cannot decide whether to love or hate Susan and seems to be writing two characters, Curry is game and becomes the consistent touchstone of the film that really ties everything together. Is she an ambitious, smack talking, holier than thou, judgmental woman or the helpful, sensible neighbor with a relatable grudge who is sick of always dealing with the fallout of this family’s drama and wants her reparations? Every time Curry is on screen, the film comes alive. She is probably the only character that gets fully fleshed out and by allowing Susan to be the villain on occasion, lands at the probable goal of this holiday film: not to be fake and saccharine sweet.
“The Holdovers” (2023) is safe from “Merry Good Enough” seizing the new, independent film holiday classic crown. The most relatable scene is the dad sitting in the back of his car as the driver will not just let him sit in peace to disassociate during the drive back to the city. On one hand, the driver delivers the much-needed Christmas lesson that Dad was missing. On the other hand, the stranger is a pain in the neck. Keene’s feature film debut and Kennedy’s second time at bat suggests that the filmmaking friends have a lot of room for growth and need to decide if they want to embrace their commercial leaning or work on their indie sensibility as they embark on future endeavors.
