Christmas movies are a crapshoot. There are the never ending Hallmark films — it feels like they produce 50 per year — the inevitably bad streaming bombs, and the occasional blockbuster theater release. To create a classic is nearly impossible. It could be argued there hasn’t been a classic Christmas film made in over a decade. We’re not talking about Christmas adjacent films, rather one’s built entirely around a Christmas theme.
This year has its fair share of entries, mostly awful as usual, but one piqued our interest recently simply because of the loaded cast. Amazon Prime’s Oh. What. Fun. stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Denis Leary, Felicity Jones, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jason Schwartzman, Dominic Sessa, Joan Chen and Eva Longoria. Writer/Director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, Wet Hot American Summer) has legit comedy writing credits and this is not a cast of D-listers.
The premise is a beleaguered housewife (Pfeiffer) just wants her kids to nominate her for Christmas mom of the year, a contest on a daytime talk show hosted by Logoria’s character Zazzy Tims. The win would net her a trip to LA, but what she really wants is recognition from her neglectful, annoying family that she’s a good mother who works hard to make their lives better. It doesn’t matter, really. The movie is a meh for the most part, mildly funny but uninteresting.
What is interesting for those of us who reside in Texas: it’s set in Houston. When we realized this, we immediately began taking notes. Did they get us right, wrong or was the setting just generic? Turns out, the city and state didn’t play much of a role at all, but when it did, let’s just say authenticity wasn’t high on the director’s wish list. We’re not even really sure why this is the setting given the very limited number of mentions. Maybe they think everyone has Pfeiffer’s character’s twang in Houston, but none of her kids or neighbors did, so they could have just as easily set it in Atlanta where it was filmed.
Anyway, here are three things they got REALLY wrong about H-Town, specifically, and Texas in general.
Driving through Texas was…a mess.
Not to blow any spoilers for you (it’s in the trailer), but Phieffer decides well into the film to leave Houston and drive to LA to nominate herself for the show. The last straw? Her family forgot her at home when they went to some weird singing/dancing show that looked like the Thunder from Down Under featuring Santa. Why anyone would decide to drive to LA from Houston on Christmas Eve is beyond us, but humoring the premise for a moment, she finally stops for the night just before midnight in Grants, New Mexico (we looked it up when she used her map app) at just before midnight.
Given the show premise, she left Houston at around 1 p.m. First, no way she makes it past Albuquerque in 10 hours. We have driven that before and its minimum 13 hours IF you don’t stop for dinner, which she did (in a snow storm we assume was in central Texas?). Besides, why would anyone drive through Albuquerque on their way to southern California from Texas. I-10 is a straight shot and you could make it to Phoenix in like 15 hours. Or, maybe just fly? We don’t know.
They do what in Corpus Christi?
At one point, Schwartzman’s character tries to calm everyone down by telling the family to take a breath and go to their happy place. He says his is Corpus Christi because they have “great tubing.” We don’t know if this was a joke. If it was, it was the most subtle, insider line in film history. Maybe it was an Easter Egg to tweak co-star Longoria who is from CC. If so, I guess bravo? But, more likely it was just a huge swing and miss.
Honestly, Schwartzman should know better given his appearance in essentially every Wes Anderson film. Regardless, it was a very, very weird moment for any Texan.
The Galleria…
Early in the film, Pfeiffer takes her daughter (Jones) to “the mall” to get a more-than-three-wick candle to outshine the little gift (three wicks!) candle she got from her neighbor (Chen). We know. At the mall, they beeline it for Crate & Barrel. If there was any place to find a four-wick candle, that’s probably the place. Of course, Houston has no mall with a C&B in it. Our sole C&B is in Highland Village.
If they really wanted to be authentic, they could have shown them driving around that god-forsaken strip mall parking lot looking for a space. That’s VERY Houston.
Not to give too much away, Pfeiffer and Jones get chased by a squad of mall cops (yeah) out of the mall which has a big weird sign above the door that says “The Galleria.” This looked literally nothing like the Galleria inside or out. When they emerged from the mall, they were in a giant parking lot. Absolutely not!
The big question we have here is why? Why bother putting that cheap sign above the door? It’s not like anyone who would know the Galleria would be like, “Finally, something real!” It made about as much sense as driving to LA from Houston in a hurry or going tubing in Corpus Christi.
It wasn’t a terrible movie. It was marginally better than Champagne Problems with Minka Kelly (yes, we saw that too — we assume some kind of masochistic streak). It was funny in spots and the cast was mostly able to prop up the forced dialog and overall soppy theme. But if you are going to choose a location like Houston as your setting, at least give us something that actually looks or feels like it. Maybe endless traffic on the West Loop or people complaining about how hot it is at Christmas. At least that would hit closer to our home.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.