A Sudden Case of Christmas (2024)

This one flew under the radar last year, despite having an impressive cast that includes Danny DeVito, Andie MacDowell, and Wilmer Valderrama (Fez, from That '70s show). This is also a bit unusual, in that it's an English language Italian remake of the 2022 Italian language film, Improvvisamente Natale. The original doesn't appear to be available in the US at present, but it's going on the list of foreign Christmas movies I'll check out if I ever get a chance, especially because the remake is surprisingly good.

I say "surprising" for a couple reasons. First, remakes of this sort don't have a great track record - usually, whatever was interesting in the original gets watered down, with the finished product generic and childish. Second, on paper the premise doesn't instill confidence: a family throws a summer Christmas for a young girl who's upset her parents are planning to separate. When I said this "flew under the radar," I may have been being generous: there's a strong possibility I skimmed that synopsis last year and breezed by it.

The thing is, just about everything about this subverts expectations in simple but interesting ways. The most notable of which is the movie's focus, which is spread relatively evenly over six or seven major characters, rather than treating it as a standard kid's flick. The film functions as a sort of meditation on love, family, and relationships, and it's emotionally honest in ways American movies exploring these subjects rarely are. Again, I haven't seen the movie this is based on, but my guess is it was relatively faithful in reproducing the tone, pace, and themes. If not, this is even more impressive than I'm giving it credit for.

All of that isn't to say this is perfect. Some aspects of the resolution wind up a little too neat, while others feel unresolved. Not all the jokes land, either. In addition, there's a very weird exchange early on establishing a pair of gay, married women who don't really come up again as a couple. The women are portrayed in a positive light, but the moment leaves you with the sense the movie is pausing to point out it's forward thinking enough to have a lesbian couple... but at the same time needs to leave the door open to cut them easily if the movie's playing in a conservative market. It's the sort of faux-progressivism Disney animation kept using a decade ago - it's jarring to see it in live-action in 2025.

I'll have more to say about all of that later, but first we are talking about a movie I ultimately liked a great deal. Despite a handful of issues, this is a good, unusual Christmas movie (and, yes, it absolutely still plays like a Christmas movie, even with Christmas being improbably set in August). All of which is to say that I am recommending this, which in turn justifies a spoiler warning, albeit a less insistent one than I sometimes give (honestly, I don't think knowing the plot is going to have a huge impact on the experience of watching this).

The movie starts with Claire (Antonella Rose), a 10 year-old girl, traveling with her parents, Jacob (Valderrama) and Abbie (Lucy DeVito, appropriately the real-life daughter of Danny DeVito), traveling to the hotel owned and run by her grandfather, Lawrence (Danny DeVito), who's still morning the loss of his wife. Normally, this is a trip they make in December as part of a Christmas tradition, but for reasons unexplained to Claire, they're going in August this year.

The reasons, of course, center on her parents' plan to separate, something they've kept from Claire. They ask Lawrence to break the news, and - to the movie's credit - the scene in which this is supposed to occur does not go the way you expect. It turns out Claire is more perceptive than anyone gave her credit for, resulting in a sequence that's funny and ultimately a bit heartbreaking, thanks to a smart script and DeVito's ability to convey a great deal of nuance with an expression and tone of voice.

In addition to being perceptive, Claire is also manipulative, and is quickly able to blackmail her family into celebrating Christmas in August under the logic they won't likely all be together by December. That also means they need Claire's other grandparents, Rose (Andie MacDowell) and Mark (José Zúñiga), which is where the other main plotline enters the picture.

Unbeknownst to Rose, Mark had a one-night stand a few years earlier at the same hotel, and the woman he slept with, Claudia (Valeria Cavalli), never forgot him. In fact, she still visits the hotel every summer hoping to run into him (aside from his first name, she seems to know nothing about his identity, including the fact he's married). Mark spots Claudia early and spends most of the movie evading her, which is made all the more difficult because his wife and Claudia become fast friends. In fact, Rose seems smitten by the more adventurous Claudia, who's lived a more exciting life, all the more so when Claudia tells her about her affair a few years earlier. Rose realizes she's never known that level of passion.

Meanwhile, the family engages in various activities, in which Claire attempts to trick her parents into getting back together. None of these shenanigans go as planned, however: horse riding and a hot air balloon ride only result in driving them further apart. While Claire's a smart kid, she doesn't understand adult dynamics, which is where the actual issues lie.

Those would be her mother's focus on a job where she's exploited and her father's feelings of inadequacy due to losing his own job. The movie will eventually resolve these, and her parents decide to stay together. Under normal circumstances, I dislike when family or kid's movies resolve marriage issues in this fashion, as I question the ethics of giving kids with similar family dynamics the expectation their own situation will follow that trajectory. And this isn't entirely an exception to that - I still think this movie is on thin ice here. But at the same time several details make this ending more palatable.

First, there's Rose and Mark's story. Everything there eventually comes out, along with the revelation that Mark isn't really over Claudia (though perhaps he better work on that - when Claudia realizes what's happening, she's horrified and mostly concerned with Rose). Rose, on the other hand, isn't really angry. Instead, her takeaway is that neither her nor Mark are getting what they want out of their marriage. Their story ends with amicable divorce, and because of this the movie communicates that this is a healthy resolution, even if Abbie and Jacob's story reaches a different destination.

That occurs due to a number of factors, the least important of which is a lost puppy, which.... Okay, there's this whole other subplot about Claire adopting a puppy from the lesbian couple I mentioned earlier, and.... Look, the puppy gets lost, and everyone turns out to help find it, which is more about resolving Lawrence's arc where he's considering selling the hotel since the family seems to be breaking up, and...

This is one of those movies where there's a lot of stuff going on, so I'm picking and choosing what to focus on, and in this case that means we're zeroing in the relationships. The dog is fine, okay? It's kind of anticlimactic, actually, which is a big part of what I was referring to when I said aspects of the resolution wrapped up a little too neatly, so even though the movie plays it up as this big third act sequence, I'd rather move on.

Where were we?

Oh, right - Abbie and Jacob. This could have been bad. It feels like it almost was, in fact, particularly because Abbie resolves her arc by realizing she hasn't been present enough with her family and quits her job. Where this deviates from, say, Hallmark movies from twenty years ago in that resolution, is the movie is crystal clear the issue is her job, not her career. We don't learn what she does next, but there's no expectation she'll transition to a stay-at-home mom while Jacob restarts his career.

Speaking of which, Jacob's feelings of inadequacy are resolved largely by Abbie confessing that she considers him the better parent. He doesn't get a job at the end of the movie, either - instead, his value as a loving father is validated, which allows them to reconcile.

Between these nuances and the movie not betraying its message that relationships are complicated and sometimes end, I wasn't as bothered by the decision to have Claire's parents reconcile. That said, maybe think twice before showing this to a young kid whose parents are separating: there's absolutely a risk of the wrong message coming through.

There's one more relationship to consider here, and it's the one with the most unrealized potential: Rose and Claudia. Remember when I mentioned there was an awkward bit informing us a minor character was a lesbian? The conversation in question was between Rose and Mark, as they saw people they recognized out of a bus window. What made the moment so random is the other character they saw - a priest - resulted in story relevant information emerging. But all we learned about the lesbian couple is that they're lesbians, and that doesn't really come up again.

Unless... was it supposed to? Rose seems to become infatuated with Claudia: she wants to be around her and to hear everything about her life. On one level, this is being played for comedy and dramatic irony - she's drawn to the one person her husband wants to avoid, and the stories she pleads for are (unbeknownst to either woman) about Mark. You can absolutely read this as Rose wanting a life more like Claudia's. In fact, that's the textual interpretation. But there's also some subtext here which MacDowell really seems to be leaning into.

One of many aspects I'm curious about is whether the original 2022 movie includes any of these details and, if so, if it resolves them differently. It really feels like Rose's arc was supposed to conclude with a larger revelation than we got. Not that the one in the movie was bad: I'd just have liked them to follow through with the more interesting subtext.

But structurally the worst beat was Claire finding the puppy safe and sound at the end. I think the movie would have been stronger if she got the dog or her parents. Both feels a bit too fairytale for the tone and story. But if the biggest flaw in your family comedy is you didn't kill a dog, that's a pretty good sign.

Let's move to August. I mean Christmas. Or both. Look, this is ultimately an extension of the Christmas in July trope we wrote about in detail back in 2016, a common conceit exploring the idea of the holidays being transferable. As you'd expect, this milks the idea for humor, exploring how other guests either have fun with or push back on the unseasonable decorations, music, and celebrations. At the same time, we're exploring traditional concepts of family renewal (or in the case of Rose/Mark non-renewal) typically reserved for the end of the year. Decorations, music, and dancing are used heavily, and the movie even has some fun with a local boy's attempts to find a way to manufacture snow (I really liked the payoff here, all the more so because at least some of it was practical). There's also an advent calendar where words are swapped out as a play on the seasons.

All of which is to say you feel as though you're watching a Christmas movie, in spite of the late summer backdrop and activities. That stuff just means you're left with a Christmas movie that feels a little different than the usual. But you'll be left with the sensation, anyway, thanks to the performances, dialogue, direction, and editing, which don't adhere to the formulas we're used to. "A Sudden Case of Christmas" is well worth checking out this year.