Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (2024)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Long Island Vice Tea

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

A most strange and beautiful drama, Tyler Taormina's holiday-themed movie Christmas Eve in Miller's Point is noisy and weird, bent on capturing moods more than plots, but its human poetry is surprisingly immersive and deeply touching.

Kathleen (Maria Dizzia), her husband Lenny (Ben Shenkman) and their teen daughter Emily (Matilda Fleming), are on their way to the annual family Christmas Eve at Emily's grandmother's Long Island home. It's a big, noisy family, with the usual grievances, as well as adoring hearts. Uncle Matthew (John Trischetti Jr.) informs his siblings that he's ready to put their mother (Mary Reistetter) in a home and sell the house, which does not go over well.

Meanwhile, Kathleen and Emily are feuding about something, and during the chaos Emily and her cousin Michelle (Francesca Scorsese) decide to sneak out and hang with some friends. On an impulse, she throws away the unopened gift that her mother has given her. But as the night wears on, she begins to regret that act.

Christmas Eve in Miller's Point might be mistaken for a National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation-like slapstick romp, but it's far from that; it feels like an untraditional way of looking at tradition. Its funny moments are so sly and offbeat that you may not even realize they're funny until later. (Michael Cera, who also co-produced, plays a deadpan police officer with several of these sideways comical moments.) The plot descriptors involving selling the family house and teens sneaking out are not used for any kind of storytelling; they're just things that happen, with no discernible outcome.

Moreover, even though the Christmas décor is rich with warmth and nostalgia, very little of the movie has to do with the holiday, other than it being the reason this family has gathered. Even the music is a collection of regular oldies (Ricky Nelson, the Ronettes, Frank Sinatra) with nary a "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" heard. (The characters do bang out clamorous renditions of "Deck the Halls" and "Jingle Bells" on the piano, however.)

What really happens is we find ourselves observing small moments. The camera roams the house, Altman-esque, liable to go anywhere at any time, and listening to everything. In one scene, a teen boy is selected to enter a dark storeroom to look for "Dragonfire," taunted by others; what he emerges with is entirely unexpected. In another scene, a character quietly describes his job as hosting an online service for the "anthropomorphic community," (i.e. people who identify as animals), but adds that he's "only in it for the money."

Maybe these moments, and many others, have no introduction or conclusion, and maybe they occur almost unnoticed within a cacophony of characters talking over one another, but nonetheless, the moments themselves are recognizable, and powerful. They contain hurt, joy, regret, confusion, and much more. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point won't be to everyone's taste, more like a thousand little poems than a satisfying story, but it's a night to remember.