Four Christmases a Yuletide Disaster
After their trip to Fiji is delayed, longtime unmarried couple Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) find themselves having to visit four different Christmas celebrations (both their parents are divorced) all in one day. As the hours drag on both discover new meaning in all this holiday merriment, learning things about one another putting their relationship to the test.
Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn in New Line Cinemas' Four Christmases
Four Christmases sucks, but not for the lack of at least trying to be something better then what it actually is. The film, in many ways, plays like star Vince Vaughn’s acidic response to having appeared in last year’s horrid holiday family adventure Fred Claus (a movie I was far too kind to, I embarrassingly admit), his role in particular so crassly detestable the actor almost daring viewers to like him.
As impressive as this is, by and large this wannabe yuletide romantic comedy has about as many yucks and guffaws as a swift kick to the head by a steel-toed boot. At 82-minutes, the film limped by at a snail’s pace, the 165-minute epic Australia (which I saw literally right before this one) feeling more like a briskly paced pre-feature short in comparison.
If anything, this movie doesn’t so much celebrate the holidays as it does its best to pummel the very idea of them into the ground transforming them into thinly dissolving dirt-covered bits of a vomit-covered nothingness. Even better, the contempt it holds for families and getting together with them to celebrate borders on amazing. It is almost as if the cadre of writers who scripted this all had such distinctly unhappy childhoods they now want to take it out on the rest of us, their aggressively narcissistic point of view enough to make even the saintliest person never want to spend Christmas with their parents ever again.
This, admittedly, wouldn’t be so bad if the last ten minutes didn’t spin this blackly comic point of view in the complete opposite direction. With almost inert suddenness the movie turns into a drama of responsibility and maturity, Brad and Kate supposedly coming to the realization their relationship might be more superficial than either of them had realized beforehand.
Problem is this twist isn’t even close to earned. For roughly two-thirds of the film’s running time these two make fun of the other’s respective family members, wax poetic about how escaping for the holidays is the right thing to do and count down the minutes until they can bolt to their next destination. They belittle the very concept of Christmas, Brad in particular such a perversely egotistical lout the chances he’d ever see the light – at least not without a Dickens-style kick in the pants – is downright impossible.
It’s not a complete disaster. Oscar-winning pros Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Mary Steenburgen all have a couple of moments that produce a handful of decent chuckles, while Witherspoon has a scene in a giant inflated house that literally made me laugh out loud. Also, it almost goes without saying but Vaughn, always the verbal gymnast, has a couple of rapid-fire monologues that hysterically connect, his bit of improvisation during a church nativity play so politically incorrect I almost cooed in unadulterated glee.
Not that it helps. The movie is so distasteful on just about every other level, and the points it so desperately tries to make (only to contradict themselves during the climax) are so boneheaded and banal, watching it is such a chore I imagine shooting myself in the leg would be more fun than sitting through it again. In other words, don’t let the relatively funny trailers fool you, Four Christmases is a disaster, and I don’t need a quartet of additional adjectives to say it.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Four Christmases Theatrical Trailer
