"An Uber Holiday Story"

24 November 2025

2 mins 30s

Snow drift.

Director Michael Spiccia plucks at our heartstrings with a vigour that borders on violence in this beautiful depiction of a volatile father-daughter relationship on behalf of Uber. Mother's creatives are, as always, kept anonymous by their agency's tedious habit of posing as a commune rather than a business, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be singled out for praise... so, whoever you are, you've provided wonderful raw material for Spiccia to weave into magic, and we salute you.

The outcome is unashamedly emotional, and it beats a tattoo we've heard before, but Christmas is the right time of year to pull this particular drum out of the cupboard, and the familiarity enables Spiccia to cleverly dip into a trope of filmic shorthands to tell the story, and he's able to do that precisely because we all know where it's headed.

Even though the music is a bit heavy-handed, and we'd liked to have seen a bolder, more counter-intuitive choice, it ramps up the sense that we're watching a Channel 5 Christmas movie without having to, you know, actually watch a Channel 5 Christmas movie. And, Uber itself is Schroedinger's brand, there and not there throughout. And that's probably the best judged aspect of all.

UK

Taxi Services