Film makes holidays miserable

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn star in “Four Christmases.”

Years ago, Christmas movies were ones in which a department store Santa might be the real deal or Ebenezer Scrooge learned the true meaning of “peace on Earth, good will toward men.” It has evolved into a very different genre. The modern Christmas movie is where a bunch of people, some of them related to one another, get together over the holiday to have a miserable time together. You might not even realize it until you’ve seen a whole bunch of them: “Christmas with the Kranks,” “Surviving Christmas,” “The Family Stone,” “Deck the Halls,” “The Perfect Holiday,” “This Christmas”…

Not all of these dysfunctional family Christmas movies are bad, but this latest entry — “Four Christmases” — doesn’t even make the effort. There’s no real story, just an extended sketch about a couple having to visit each of their divorced parents in a single day. Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are two yuppies who’ve been living together for three years. They have no plans to marry, don’t want kids, and don’t want to see the folks. This year they’ve lied to their respective parents about doing charity work over the holiday so they can instead spend a week or so in Fiji.

The flimsy premise then requires San Francisco to be fogged in (apparently only around the airport and the Golden Gate Bridge) and for them to be on a live newscast reporting that all flights are canceled. Before you know it, they’ve agreed to visit all four of their parents. His dad (Robert Duvall) is crass, and his two brothers (Jon Favreau, Tim McGraw) think it’s hilarious to beat up on their “little” brother. This painful sequence seems endless.


Then it’s off to her mom (Mary Steenburgen) who has taken up with the local minister but makes it clear that she thinks Brad is a hunk, as do all the other female relatives. Here it’s Kate who is repeatedly humiliated by such things as showing childhood pictures before she lost weight, and revealing that she was involved in a lesbian relationship. (Since this is supposed to be a comedy, the joke is that she didn’t know it.)

Although the movie is only 82 minutes you may find yourself checking your watch at this point, knowing there’s still two more parents to go: his mom (Sissy Spacek), who is involved with Brad’s childhood best friend, and her dad (Jon Voight), who seems relatively normal. Brad and Kate have now gotten on each other’s nerves as much as the audience’s, so it’s up to Voight — and Duvall, who suddenly reappears — to give their kids the advice that sends them back to each other.

All that’s left for this rancid confection is a “happy” ending that reprises two earlier “jokes,” one of them involving vomiting. Here’s a clue for people who make movies like “Four Christmases”: If your holiday season is that awful, keep it to yourself. Making movies like this is simply ruining it for everyone else.


Source: telegram.com