Karen Han

Like The Snowman, The Last Thing He Wanted fails to give its audience all the clues necessary to form a coherent picture, and flops in spite of what should be a killer director/cast combination.

What’s frustrating is that The Wrong Missy isn’t entirely devoid of self-awareness.

Cats undermines itself in both editing and musical arrangement, barely has a plot to hang its hat on, and is CGI-ed into oblivion. Yet there’s something weirdly wonderful about just how committed Hooper is to his vision, which feels like it should have been audience-tested into something less phantasmagorical.

Characters go from one place to the next with no explanation and no second thought, and even single scenes play out as if someone attacked the reel of film with a pair of scissors.

It’s equal parts modern fairy tale, time-travel movie that’s meant to make people understand and appreciate their own era, and Christmas magic movie, and the creators don’t do anything meaningful to refresh those genre trappings, or play with their conventions.