You watch the trailer, and you think, well, this plot is really predictable (and is also given away by that very trailer completely) - but then you think: Well, which Christmas movie wouldn´t be? Pretending that people cannot stand anything else than a miracle at that holiday.

This Year? Even worse: All we want is some compensation to not laugh and cry at the same time over chorals badly performed by a distant cousin or those bad gifts you might even not be able to return ("You don´t mind, I bought that on sale?") - and all the real great rituals you got used to since you were, like, five years old.

"The Happiest Season" seems to fit into that pattern: A "Guess Who´s Coming To Dinner" - of white people.

But, wait, those parents here are dull and heartless (why does someone go and see those kind of ancestors in their mature life, anyway??). Compared to wonderful confused and confusing Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, playing a couple of committed Democrats, who would never ever think poorly about black people - as long as they would, please, NOT marry their daughter.

In "The Happiest Season" nobody has another layer - the open lesbian is outspoken and feisty, her girlfriend in the closet is as girlie and conservative as can be. And the gay friend is mostly shrieking while the sisters are either beast or burden.

Don´t get me wrong: Christmas movies are always full of clichés - but at least the right ones.

Like, at the end, when the phony, obvious Republican father finds out and fears for his political career - he actually really loses it.

In my kind of Christmas movie, one angel or another would take care of a miracle, like, a campaign that runs even better with a guy who lives in this century, accepting all kind of sexual orientation.

Instead of thinking that a conversative, pathetic guy like this father would swoop into the Christmas Card picture without a minute of doubt.

So the end becomes kind of the worst part.

I just took some inspiration from the idea of watching "It´s A Wonderful Life" again - when the suddenly reconciled famliy in "The Happiest Season" goes and watches it together.

As does my family. Since I was five years old.

Pictures courtesy of Hulu´s "The Happiest Season" and Turner Classics "Guess Who´s Coming To Dinner".