Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday , that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.

Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday , that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.

Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday , that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.