Critic Reviews

It's a gleeful display of song and dance that conjures a fleeting nostalgia and exhilaration that even the hardest of hearts can fall for in late December.

In the end, A Very Murray Christmas delivers exactly what's been promised all along--a show!

It's profane and funny and totally out of the ordinary. A Very Murray Christmas won't become a classic of the Christmas genre, but it's certainly a nice way to spend the holidays.

An endearingly oddball tribute to the variety specials of yore.

Amusing, odd, fascinating, indulgent and not quite as funny as you might expect, or hope.

Murray decides to improvise a boozy party for stranded hotel guests and workers. It’s here, after a sputtery start, that the irony thaws and a warm, lovely spirit takes hold.

When the special drags a bit, it feels as if Netflix, the anti-Scrooge of this free-spending TV era, has paid Murray and Coppola to film a champagne-infused holiday shindig with their friends. Still, A Very Murray Christmas has a sweetness to it that keeps it from lapsing fully into self-indulgence. At its best, the proceedings keep alive the spirit of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road pictures

This is an old soul's Christmas special. This is also a Christmas special for grown-ups, both because of a scattering of adult language, but also because Coppola's trademark dreamy/languid treatment of the material would bore younger viewers.

A Very Murray Christmas deserves applause, and not merely because artists like Murray and Coppola getting to do their own thing between movies is good. The special is acting out a pose of woozy self-regard, sure, but it represents a commitment to a point-of-view more sustained than many single hours I’ve seen recently.

All in all, while not an absolutely great Christmas special since it struggles to find its footing at times plot-wise, it's worth watching for the celebrity cameos and the raucous and at times hilarious singing.