Single All the Way (2021)
I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe a few times during this movie. It is beautiful.
Peter (Michael Urie) is excited because he’s finally not single on Christmas. He wants to take his boyfriend Tim (Steve Lund) to New Hampshire with him to meet his family. Peter is a set designer for ad campaigns (I think) in LA, but his dream is to open his own plant store. He lives with his best friend Nick (Philomen Chambers) and Nick’s dog Emmett. Nick is an author but is in kind of a slump after the success of his first book, so he’s been working for the app TaskRabbit. People hire him to do odd jobs for them, like hang their Christmas lights. This is how Nick finds out that Tim is married. To a woman. With children. Peter ends things immediately, but he doesn’t want to be single on Christmas, so he wants to lie to his family and tell them that he and Nick have fallen in love after all these years. Nick doesn’t agree to lie, but he does agree to go to New Hampshire. Emmett goes to a doggy hotel, which I don’t know how many there are out in LA, but there’s 3 in my area, and they all get booked up well before any major holiday, so that’s probably the least believable thing about this movie.
In New Hampshire, we meet Peter’s whole family: his mom Carole (Kathy Najimy) who goes by Christmas Carole in December, his dad Harold (Barry Bostwick), his “favorite” sister Lisa (Jennifer Robertson), his other sister Ashleigh (Melanie Leishman), his nieces Dani (Madison Brydges) and Sofia (Alexandra Beaton), his nephews Simon (Gryffin Hanvelt) and Sam (Viggo Hanvelt), his brothers in law Tony (Stefano DiMatteo) and Jim (Victor Andres Turgeon-Trelles), and the iconic Aunt Sandy (Jennifer Coolidge). But before Peter and Nick announce their relationship, Christmas Carole tells Peter that she has set him up a blind date with the new personal trainer at her gym, James (Luke Macfarlane). Nick pushes Peter to do it because Nick doesn’t want to lie to Peter’s family.
So Peter goes out with James, and the dates go well, but the whole time Peter is wishing he were with his family. Eventually Peter realizes that the only thing he really cares about in LA is Nick and that he wants to move back to New Hampshire.
I loved everything about this movie. Who amongst us has not done choreography to a Britney song with our relatives? The whole family is delightfully quirky in all the best ways. Also, shout out to Kevin the Snow Plow Guy (Dan Finnerty) for giving us such a performance. Overall, 5 stars.
