sanwolfx

The film touches on a lot of issues concerning disability, but does very little with each of them before jumping to the next one. And then, towards the second half, the movie changes direction to focus on Yuma's complicated family history rather than her personal struggles; it feels as a contrived pretext to not really answer the questions of the first half about love and sex, but just say "she reconciled with her mom, so everything is fine".

Annoyingly, most of the conflict in the film is resolved by the fact that Yuma is a very talented artist, kind of wealthy, pretty, kind, and well-adjusted to be independent. So the moment she makes some good friends, it seems like all her troubles disappear. It's one of those cases where the story looks as if it's centered around social issues, but in reality it's more about the character dealing with mental barriers, and once those are overcome the film forgets about all the systemic problems which are still there.

And then, the friends she gets sort of fall out of the sky, and immediately decide to take care of her for no apparent reason; they are the nicest, most supportive, and least judgemental people in the world. So again, the film takes the easy way out and avoids dealing with any of the problems people with disabilities encounter in more realistic, flawed friendships.

Very funny, imaginative and visually engaging, up until the last thirty minutes. The film creates a rich and exciting world, filled with unique situation and twists to the original tale. But then, it seems the creators didn't know what to do with the story in order to give it a unique meaning to match, so they just forced a development full of clichés: the MC taking dumb decisions, miscomunication problems, a one-dimensional evil plot, chase scenes...All in order to give a lesson at the end which was already very clear before all that unnecessary mess.

I think the movie would have worked better if it had remained a comedy. Or if it had focused on the unique dynamics of the town or the postal service and the ideosyncracies of the different characters, sticking to being its own story instead of turning into an action film about "this is how the cliché Santa came to be" and forcing th MC to go through the old so-this-is-the-meaning-of-christmas thing.

The best thing about this film is its quirkiness and its visual inventiveness. It works very well at the level of comedy and surrealist science fiction. However, the core of the story is a family drama which is absolutely shallow and cliche. The characters become omniscient demigods putting at risk the existence of the multiverse due to them being hung up on daddy/mommy issues. And at the end, everything is resolved by the characters simply telling one another how much they love each other and how good life can be if we are optimistic. I kid you not, half of this film is an over the top melodrama, with the philosophical climax of a tumblr post. The movie takes itself too seriously, and drops all the fun of the multiverse for the sake of a generic "heroine beats bad guys with the power of love" action and some LGBT positivity message.

And did I mention how many dildos, butt-plugs and BDSM jokes appear for no reason?