Emilia Clarke plays an aspiring singer working as an elf in a year-round Christmas shop (run by a slumming Michelle Yeoh) in London. She meets a mister-right kind of guy (an inert Henry Golding – Crazy Rich Asians) who’s just too good to be true. 

The director of this treacly, forced and painfully predictable fluff is Paul Feig, who amused us with Bridesmaids; less so here. But the fault for this misfire lies with the awful screenplay and story by Emma Thompson, who showed some writing chops in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility but slips too easily into gooey cliché with this kind of vacuous material. 

Emilia Clarke is of course Daenares in the hugely popular Game of Thrones. In her forays into the beat-to-death romantic comedy genre (Me Before You), however, she raises the concept of cloying to a whole new level. Effervescence goes only so far. Maybe it’s her prehensile eyebrows. She’s clearly talented but I’m thinking still looking for something worthy of those talents. This is not it. 

Nice location shots of Christmas time London. 

P.S. You’re going to have to like George Michael. A lot.

December 6 (103 min)