IGN
Droves of determined "Bill Murray is God" fans who claim to be willing to watch the star of Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day in anything are in for a bit of a cheeky challenge with Netflix's A Very Murray Christmas - a walking-dream style homage to "good hang" holiday variety specials of yesteryear, premiering Friday, December 4th. Stepping in as host/nucleus - like crooners Dean Martin and Perry Como (and many more) have done over a good chunk of the previous century - Murray smartly evokes the "man of the people" pop-in vibe that he's cultivated over the past few years.
Reuniting with Lost in Translation director Sofia Coppola, A Very Murray Christmas occasionally gives off a similar aura. Trapped in a hotel during a blizzard (NYC's Carlyle, specifically), Murray starts off despondent over the fact that he's contractually obligated to play ringleader for a live holiday special in which no stars have arrived. Guests (the first of many) Amy Poehler and Julie White busy around him as frantic producers while Murray prepares to commit TV suicide. And it's during these first 10-to-15 minutes that the special drags. No coincidence too perhaps, these are the moments that contain the show's meager attempts at comedy.
Once you get past this hurdle though, the special relaxes into itself and becomes a big booze-soaked musical pal-around. With guests like Jason Schwartzman, Rashida Jones, Maya Rudolph, Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis, and the band Phoenix. I'd say the middle part of this soirée is the best. Just a Christmas Eve laze in the hotel bar with the "work staff" - doing shots of vodka and/or tequila while singing songs such as "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Rounding things out here is a dream sequence featuring a more elaborate and "traditionally festive" series of numbers with Miley Cyrus and George Clooney (Yes, he sings - a bit. It's actually quite funny) that stands as the special's final hurrah. Odd though as it is to have a dream element within a show that already feels like one, but it still works.
As Murray himself slowly warms to the idea of spending the holidays stuck inside a hotel, so will you to the idea behind this special. Especially if you're not familiar with the sort of soused songfest programming it's attempting to pay respect to. As mentioned, it doesn't start off that promising. Essentially, the premise's "set up" is the weakest part, but once the star himself begins to enjoy himself, so will you.
A Very Murray ChristmasCaptures the True Spirit of the Season
Confusion. And commercialism. And goodwill to all mankind, via celebrity cameos and classic songs
What is Christmas? A religious holiday? A commercial ritual? A time of warmth, and togetherness, and generosity, and love? A time of sadness, and loneliness, and regret? Is it magic? Is it mythic? Is it madness?
It is, at this point, all of those things. As a culture, here in the U.S., we tend to be extremely confused about what, precisely, is being celebrated on December 25 (and, at this point, the entire month that precedes it). The Starbucks cup controversy. The fact that you can buy an advent calendar from Dior. The notion that there is, apparently, a war being currently waged in the name of the most wonderful time of the year.
Nowhere is all this yuletide perplexity made more clear than in A Very Murray Christmas, the Netflix special directed by Sofia Coppola that takes the traditional cliches of the Celebrity-Driven Christmas Extravaganza—complete with musical acts and dance numbers and cameos from fellow celebrities—and makes Murray of it. The premise: Bill Murray, playing himself or a proximate version, has signed on to do one of those extravaganzas, this particular one set at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, on Christmas Eve. He does not want to do the show. This is mostly because he thinks the show is silly, but also because, apparently, he is beset with holiday ennui. (We are meant to understand this because A Very Murray Christmas’s opening musical number features Murray, bedecked in a tux and an antler headband, crooning “Christmas Blues” as Paul Shaffer accompanies him on the piano. And because Murray announces to his producers that “I feel so alone” and also that “God hates me.”)
Murray is forced to do the special, though, because—as his producers (Amy Poehler and Julie White) repeatedly remind him—he is under contract. And because, Poehler also reminds him, with an indeterminate amount of irony, “Everything that’s fun is always hard.”
Full movie on Pubfilmno1
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