Single All the Way (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

I'll never understand the Hallmark Christmas movie niche. I suppose it's not different than the plethora of nonseasonal rom-coms generally, but connecting romance and Christmas has always felt icky to me. Perhaps that's mostly because a key demographic, until extremely recently, has always been ignored by the festive phenomenon. The Holiday was about as far as I would go into romantic yuletide cinema, and even that movie requires a fair amount of wine for this viewer. Even Hulu's Happiest Season, a messy and bewilderingly problematic attempt at inclusive merrymaking in 2020, made me want to pull out my eyes and feed them to a reindeer. And yet, lo and behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all the people with Netflix accounts.

Single All the Way is a delightful confection of queerness and Christmas tied up in a bow of joy. Social media manager Peter (Michael Urie) is excited to travel from LA to his family home in New Hampshire for Christmas. Usually, he's annoyed about it because his family -- who are beautifully supportive -- always ask about his relationship status and he's always single. Not so this year, and his boyfriend Tim is going with him. All is great until Peter's roommate and best friend Nick (Philemon Chambers) discovers that Tim is married to a woman and has a family. To avoid the pity his family would bestow on him, Peter hatches a plan to bring Nick home instead and pretend that they are dating. After all, can two gay guys be platonic friends?

This isn't When Harry Met Sally, thank heaven, and so the clichés of heteronormativity are largely absent. True, the muscular Nick is a handyman while Peter has a bit of a limp wrist, but largely their friendship is based on trust and mutual affection. But, as we all hope, they do end up together for real. And, actually, the joy of the film is watching everyone else's expectations burgeon into fruition, because early in the film we learn that Peter's family dearly loves Nick already. As they push and connive and scheme to get the two to spend more time together -- in typical Hallmark fashion -- we wonder briefly if they're all laboring under a pathetic misconception that all gays want all other gays. But they're not, and in the expertly written dialogue (often heavyhanded, but knowingly so), each family member reveals their precise and lovely reasons for wanting this arrangement to work.

Tony-winner Michael Mayer, who directed Spring Awakening and Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway (among many other projects) and the films A Home at the End of the World and The Seagull, draws special attention to the family in group scenes. He's not interested in nuance, and thankfully he knows exactly what he's doing in terms of genre, medium, and content. Mayer seems to pull out all the stops in making everyone feel good the whole time, especially the viewer. Jennifer Coolidge appears in full camp mode as Aunt Sandy, directing the Christmas pageant and belting out Whitney's "Joy to the World" before commenting to Peter that "the gays are always obsessed with me. I don't know why...but I like it."

Chambers was the standout here for me, and he does most of the heavylifting in both senses of the word. Urie is surprisingly likable in a role that could easily have come off as bitchy. The other actors are all solid, including Kathy Najimy (Hocus Pocus, Sister Act) as Peter's mother, Jennifer Robertson (Schitt's Creek) as his sister, and even Luke MacFarlane (an actual Hallmark leading man) as the hunky new spin class teacher set up on a blind date by Peter's mom. But this isn't a movie for actual acting, much as it's not a masterclass in editing, pacing, directing, writing, or anything other than inclusive joy.

It's important, though, because it avoids the dangerous and too-prevalent plot devices of keeping queer characters closeted. Even the most recent acclaimed gay films center on coming out, being outed, or having secret crushes that are made public by the climax: The Prom, Love, Simon, Boy Erased, and even that Hulu trainwreck two Christmases ago. Nothing else about this movie is groundbreaking; in fact, if Peter were a woman, I'd have never seen it. But I loved the film's casual, normalizing behavior in sidestepping the circular trauma of centering coming out at the center of queer romance and social visibility. And then to have the film really dig into the "found family" life-affirming attitude of its protagonists was almost too much positivity in a single streaming flick for this viewer. And a happy new year, y'all!