Sugar and spice: Matthew Wilson defends this sweet and cynical Christmas gem.
Out of the many more adult Christmas movies, The Ref is one easily the most cynical and nasty, but it’s also one of the most honest Christmas movies I’ve ever seen and stands as an underrated entry into the genre.
The film follows Gus (Denis Leary) a career criminal attempting to do the last big score, unfortunately things don’t go to plan, Gus and his partner are separated and a state-wide search is conducted to find him. In an attempt to escape, Gus takes married couple Caroline and Lloyd (Judy Davies and Kevin Spacey) hostage in their own house.
Unfortunately for Gus, Caroline and Lloyd are having a marriage crisis and can’t go two seconds without arguing, leading Gus to act as a buffer between them while also making sure that neither they, their troublesome son Jesse (Robert J. Steinmiller), or their extended family call the police in the time it takes to find an escape route.
This very easily could’ve been a film about a guy that takes a family hostage on Christmas but the addition of the dysfunctional unit and the criminal that deals with them is not only honest but original, Gus stays because he has no choice but that doesn’t mean he wants to put up with this shit and his bystander to the family drama helps them all to clear the air.
Plus it’s Christmas, and the film captures that spitefulness that comes with spending a day with people you don’t like in the name of celebrating. Something lot of people could relate to.
Acting was good throughout, everyone made their roles believable yet still funny, Connie (Christine Baranski) was the uptight bitch with a stick in her ass that needed to unwind for just a moment. Her husband Gary (Adam LeFevre) needed to grow a pair and stick up for himself rather than letting his wife rule the roost.
Matriarch of the family Rose (Glynis Johns) was a truly despicable character and it was easy to see that that majority of the family problems stemmed from her. She was controlling, manipulative, uncaring, just a real horrid bitch which made it all the better once the family started standing up to her.
Lloyd and Caroline were very much two halves of one unit and it’s impossible to talk about one without the other. Right from the start it’s clear these two have problems, their marriage is stale, Caroline had a minor affair, Lloyd has become numb to everything and can’t bring himself to care anymore and Jesse is a troublemaker who they can’t decide whether to treat like a criminal or mother him. Both of them are brilliantly awful, Spacey being the more snippety one who questions everything Caroline says like it’s meant to be offensive while Davies shows Caroline as holding a lot of resentment over her past choices and sees Lloyd as a mistake that’s been with her all these years. Both are very flawed characters that are so against one another that they’ll both lie to themselves just to argue that the other is wrong, but the more the film goes on the more you see this isn’t just a hateful relationship, this is years of miscommunication all building up to where neither of them can agree on who to blame anymore. By the third act where the two of them look back on their problems the two actors pull in some heavy scenes.
Finally there was Gus, a man already on the edge and that’s before he’s stuck with the worst family in America, the entire film is essentially watching Gus lose his mind trying to understand how a family could be so horrid, having grew up with the notion that family is supposed to mean something. Leary manages to make Gus harsh but likeable by putting him against this dysfunctional unit and his no-nonsense style actually helps them air their thoughts and finally get it all out in the open.
Director Ted Demme delivers a film that does get pretty dark but never loses that bitingly cynical humour that draws you in. Everyone is a little bit nasty, everyone is a like bit selfish, everyone has their own flaws and it makes them not only more relatable but funnier, watching people try to act nice while simultaneously projecting their own problems onto each other makes for a darkly funny movie then add in a criminal stirring the pot and it’s a recipe for a nasty vein of humour but one I laughed at more and more as the film went on. The little things that would set off an argument, the inventive ways Gus would shut everyone up, the half-hidden insults chucked at each other while putting on a smiling face. This is what Christmas is all about.
It’s not all one-liners and threatening to punch elderly women, what really got me was the emotional weight behind it, especially in the third act once Lloyd and Caroline started looking back on how they ended up so bitter and hateful. It would’ve been easy to just have the film be all sarcastic putdowns but by adding those moments which focus on the characters and the admission to their problems, the film is all the better because it clears the air and the sudden weight on the film hits all the harder because of how it differs from the rest of the movie. It’s a bold choice to include but it works for what the film wants to get across and allows the ending to sort itself out as a result.
It’s understandable why The Ref underperformed, it’s a little cruel and a little mean and not exactly family Christmas viewing. But it holds its own meaning of the Christmas spirit, one about how we all come together in order to hate each other for one day of the year. While it might be more adult than your standard fare, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more honest Christmas film out there.
