In just a few years, Anna Kendrick’s already enjoyed a successful career playing to type. As Natalie Keener in 2009’s Up in the Air, Kendrick’s breakout role was a perky go-getter who finds herself in over her head at a job termination agency. Since then, she’s had a string of roles in mainstream comedies and dramas that revolve around a similar mold. She plays a wiser variation in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, gives empathy to a fresh-faced therapist in 50/50, and is the buoyant center of Pitch Perfect‘s a cappella school spirit — all solid performances, all solid variations on the same theme.
Kendrick wouldn’t deviate from type until director Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies, playing the girlfriend of Jake Johnson and a character whose impressionable nature felt dangerous to the stability of the story. As Jill, Kendrick feels detrimental to Drinking Buddiesâ cozy relationships and a source for trouble rather than a solution for it. It’s a deviation Kendrick continues in Happy Christmas, where she plays Jenny, who goes to live with her filmmaker brother Jeff (Swanberg), his wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) and their infant son in the Chicago suburbs after a messy breakup.
The precise reasons behind Jenny’s breakup are never made clear, but Swanberg telegraphs Jenny’s less-than-responsible behavior when on her first night in town, she makes an awkward ploy to skip out on dishes to go party. A night of reconnecting with an old friend (Lena Dunham, who’s great here despite little to do beyond comedic relief) leads to strange cocktails, weed, and eventually, passing out in the party host’s bed. As she lays on the floor of a relative stranger’s apartment, Kendrick mumbles an “I’m fine” to the protestations of those around her but Jenny clearly isn’t, and Kendrick turns a sloppy drunk moment into something more revealing. Outwardly, Kendrick’s good looks and her character’s devil may care attitude suggest confidence hiding a deeper uncertainty.
Kendrick isn’t afraid to play the “spoiled brat” at times either. In Happy Christmas’s one moment of tension, Jenny comes home drunk and passes out with a frozen pizza cooking in the oven. Jeff and Kelly are (rightfully) upset, but Jenny makes the smoke detectorâs late-night wake-up even worse when she slurs that a smoky house isn’t a “big deal.” As her brother reminds Kelly more than once, Jenny’s 27 years old but she acts closer to 17.
It’s why Happy Christmasâ charm comes from seeing Jenny cozy up to her new living situations — Kelly in particular. The pair bond when Jenny convinces the mom/novelist she can make a quick buck writing a trashy romance novel, and Swanbergâs fast and loose directing style allows the actors to play off each other in hilarious ways. Itâs fun to see a once bratty Kendrick brainstorm story points with Lynskey and retain some likability inside her “leap first, look later” character. How do you describe intercourse in a dream? And what should your dream man smell like?
It would be unfair to reduce Happy Christmas to another quiet effort from Swanberg’s perpetual movie-making machine. Where Drinking Buddies believes it has two equally flawed characters, Happy Christmas understands that Jenny is the real problem. So does its actress.