Boxing Day

Writer director and star Adl Ameen is Melvin a British author, now living in the US whose latest book is going to be a big hit. When his manager suggest he heads to London for Christmas to promote it he’s reticent to do it as it means he’ll have to face his family. A family who he left a couple of years earlier when his parents divorced. Not only that but he’ll have to face their boxing day party and for good measure he’ll be introducing them to his soon to be fiancé for the first time. When he arrives in England he not only has that to deal with but also his ex girlfriend, who is still very much in the picture!

Overall Boxing Day just falls on the right side of enjoyable, mainly due to a solid final act, but it’s a close run thing. It didn’t all work for me as it felt like two films fighting each other for attention.

Firstly there is an interesting look at families, the complexity of relationships, the impact of infidelity. This includes interesting subtle looks at raising a black family in Britain and a lovely father and son scene about regret and fear. In all honesty this was the film I wanted to watch.

Alongside this is a clunky, predictable Christmas rom-com that mechanically ticks all of the boxes, happy relationship, relationship under pressure from an ex etc. you get the picture. And these two stories don’t sit comfortably together.

That said, what Boxing Day has going for it is a likeable cast and likeable characters. Ameen straddles the two stories nicely and Sheyi Cole as his younger brother Josh offers a nice light touch in his tricky relationship story. Leigh-Anne Pinnock has a solid debut as Georgia but the Star of the show is King’s Lisa who despite spending parts of the film hiding her real life “baby bump”, is charming and engaging throughout, full of humour, fiesty and strong.

Boxing day is by no means perfect it’s probably not funny enough and the rom-com bits are too predictable. But there is a really interesting look at the family dynamic, a likeable cast of characters and some lovely scenes showing family at its best and worst. And it’s those things that it brings together to just about pull off the enjoyable “Christmas movie” trick.