DVDFile

I think director Ron Howard made a serious misstep when he cast Jim Carrey as the iconic Grinch. The one actor who seems hell-bent on destroying Christmas of late is Vince Vaughn. As I noted in my review of Fred Claus last year around this time, Vaughn is either a major fan of Christmas … or he just enjoys cashing in those big Christmas bonus checks he gets for starring in holiday-themed fare. I tend to think the latter is more likely. Here he is again headlining another Christmas movie, the whimsically-titled Four Christmases — a big turkey that was served up as a post-Thanksgiving feast in theaters last year and is now being thawed out and foisted upon us as cold turkey leftovers this Thanksgiving on Blu-ray and DVD. And like a lot of presents we don’t necessarily ask or even hope for, Four Christmases arrives in lovely packaging adorned with pretty ribbons and bows to lure us into a false sense of security. But then once we tear open all that elaborate wrapping paper, we realize only too late that we’ve been re-gifted with the same thoughtless and useless present that people keep trying to pawn off on others.

The eye-catching wrapping paper on this stale lump of fruitcake is an impressive cast of talent — many of whom are former Oscar-winners — all assembled to play various members of a couple’s decidedly extended family. We’re talking people like Sissy Spacek, Robert Duvall and Jon Voight here; not to mention Reese Witherspoon (another Academy Award winner), who plays opposite Vaughn as his significant other, Kate. Perhaps tapping into his own feelings about Christmas, Vaughn plays Orlando “Brad” McVie who, along with girlfriend Kate (Reese Witherspoon), annually find an excuse to skip out on participating in the holiday traditions kept by their respective families. Instead of suffering through the obligatory Christmas dinners with dual sets of divorced parents, screaming kids and family arguments, they head to various vacation hotspots and celebrate the holiday apart from all the chaos. Actually, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Of course, watching Brad and Kate drink tropical cocktails on a beach wouldn’t provide much dramatic tension, and so their latest planned excursion to Fiji under the ruse of engaging in charity work gets derailed when an unexpected fogbank forces the cancellation of all outgoing flights. What’s worse is the stranded Brad and Kate are photographed by a local news crew at the airport — so all their family members now know they are, in fact, available to attend their Christmas celebrations. With nowhere left to hide, the couple is now expected to visit Brad’s father Howard (Robert Duvall), Brad’s mother Paula (Sissy Spacek), Kate’s father Creighton (Jon Voight) and Kate’s mother Marilyn (Mary Steenburgen) — hence the grammatically-clumsy “four Christmases.”

That initial setup has the makings for a pretty amusing film, when you think about it. Sadly, Four Christmases is not that movie. First up is Brad’s father Howard, a grouchy and aggressive old coot who makes even Ebeneezer Scrooge seem likable by comparison. While Brad seems to have developed into a sociable guy despite his father’s influence, his two brothers Dallas (Tim McGraw) and Denver (Jon Favreau) clearly haven’t fallen far from the tree. They’re both oafish brutes who relish torturing their brother with various wrestling moves and surprise attack schemes. Duvall settles into his tired old curmudgeon shtick here and even the inspired pairing of McGraw and Favreau as Brad’s tag-team brothers falls flat amidst the over-the-top fight gags. Moving on to Kate’s mother Marilyn (Mary Steenburgen), an older woman trying to amend for her former promiscuous ways, she’s now dating a pastor (Dwight Yoakam) who seems all-too-familiar with sin himself. Kate’s sister Courtney (Kristin Chenoweth) is also visiting mom along with her two sons, and she spends an inordinate amount of time talking about childhood stories that probably should have been kept under wraps.

Things don’t improve much when they visit Brad’s mom Paula (Sissy Spacek), a small but persistent woman who has remarried a much younger man … who also turns out to be Brad’s former best buddy from high school. Spacek seems ill-suited to play up the comedy here and it shows. Last, but not least, they end up at the home of Kate’s father Creighton (Jon Voight), who’s probably the closest thing to being a “normal” parent in this hodgepodge of warmed-over stereotypes. The odd thing about Voight’s refreshingly calm turn as the lone parent figure with any common sense is it’s too little, too late. We’ve already been subjected to an hour of familial pummeling by the time Brad and Kate get to his house and we’re so conditioned to expect more chaos that it registers as a bit of a let down. The movie then vainly attempts to squeeze some sentiment out of a closing coda in which we are supposed to believe all these fractured factions could actually come together and support the couple in a life-changing decision. Puh-leeze. While there are maybe one or two legitimate points that made me laugh — one was a sequence where old buddies Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn get into a limb-locking tussle on the living room floor — the vast majority of Four Christmases is simply mind-numbing in its attempt at forced humor. And while Vaughn and Witherspoon do build something of a credible rapport together as mates, neither seems to have any realistic connection with their respective family members.

I’m not quite sure who to blame for this fiasco, but one culprit might be director Seth Gordon, who was previously known only for his documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Then again, this mercifully-brief, 88-minute film has a script credited to no less than four writers — Matt Allen, Caleb Wilson, Scott Moore and Jon Lucas — with only Moore and Lucas having any screenwriting experience beyond this film (if you consider penning Ghosts of Girlfriends Past experience, that is). All the cast members here have proven they have talent in previous projects, so the only real thing you can accuse them of is making a bad choice this time out. But in the end Four Christmases is just another in a long line of prefabricated Hollywood junk that they continue funneling into theaters in the hopes of picking just a few more hard-earned dollars out of our collective pockets. It’s also another sad example of how the true meaning of Christmas has taken a backseat to corporate greed and a mad dash to exceed last year’s bottom-line numbers. Everyone’s got to have a Christmas song, a Christmas album, or the inevitable Christmas movie. Or, if you’re Vince Vaughn, two Christmas movies … and not a single good one between them.

Comments (0)

Leave a comment

Title
Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Email
	Add Comment