For “Last Christmas”, starring Emilia Clarke, the question is; can it still be an uplifting story, if the main character is a struggling young woman named Kate, who is almost homeless? Who has to sleep in the couches of her few remaining friends to survive? Who has a bad job working as an elf in an all year Christmas store in London? Who has tried for years, like so many other young people with a dream, to break into show business with no prospects and no luck?  Unfortunately, despite the likability of Kate and her endearing smile regardless of her horrendous lot in life, I found this movie mostly a downer because there is nothing funny about any young person with a life like this. There will never be anything uplifting about being homeless, a reality faced by far too many millions of people in this world.

There is also a very unusual love story in this film, with a twist that I did see coming but was still very well done.  Kate’s love interest Tom is played very well by actor Henry Golding. The other issue is that there are too many back stories mostly unrelated to the main story that at times seem disconnected and erratic involving Kate’s sister and her mother, played by actress Emma Thompson, who also wrote the screenplay.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for Last Christmas are a low 49% and my rating is about 70% only for the acting of Emilia Clarke and music of singer George Micheal, with a very marginal recommendation.