Four Christmases (2008) New Line Cinema/Comedy RT: 88 minutes Rated PG-13 (language, sexual humor, violent content) Director: Seth Gordon Screenplay: Matt Allen, Caleb Wilson, Scott Moore and Jon Lucas Music: Alex Wurman Cinematography: Jeffrey L. Kimball Release date: November 26, 2008 (US) Cast: Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Mary Steenburgen, Kristen Chenoweth, Jon Favreau, Tim McGraw, Katy Mixon, Dwight Yoakam, Carol Kane, Colleen Camp, Patrick Van Horn, True Bella, Skyler Gisondo, Zak Boggan, Jeanette Miller, Jack Donner. Box Office: $120.1M (US)/ $163.7M (World)
Rating: NO STARS!!!
HOW THE HELL DID Four Christmases MAKE $120 MILLION?! That’s the question I’m still asking sixteen years later. The nicest thing I can say about this spectacularly unfunny holiday comedy is that it’s not quite as bad as Christmas with the Kranks. That’s still not saying very much so please don’t take that as any form of praise. Praise is the very last thing that I want to heap upon this mean-spirited bit of holiday entertainment.
Derision, that’s another story. Four Christmases deserves as much scorn as one can muster. It’s terrible beyond belief. I HATED it with every fiber of my being. I got angrier and angrier as I watched it. The way the families behave towards the main characters doesn’t just border on abuse, it is abuse. It’s easy to understand why Brad (Vaughn, Wedding Crashers) and Kate (Witherspoon, Walk the Line) don’t want to spend Christmas with their families. Their respective families are horrible. I’ll go more into that in a moment.
First, let me just say there is nothing even remotely entertaining about Four Christmases. Apparently, a lot of people disagree with that based on its box office take. I did a double take when I saw that figure. I can’t believe it went over with audiences. It boggles the mind to think anybody would find this wretched movie even mildly amusing. In the words of my dearly departed mother, it’s not even a little bit funny.
I’ve never been much of a fan of movies or TV shows where families are mean to each other. I had to stop watching Married with Children and Malcolm in the Middle for this very reason. Al Bundy is a hilarious character, but I got sick and tired of watching how horribly he was treated by his wife and kids. I felt this intense surge of rage rising within me as I slowly realized that Brad and Kate were just going to take all the crap thrown at them. Four Christmases is the kind of movie that makes you side with the Grinch in his desire to put a stop to Christmas festivities. He should steal all copies and negatives of this nasty-tasting Christmas cookie. He’d be doing the world a favor.
The title refers to the four different Christmas visits (both sets of parents are divorced) that Brad and Kate must make after their flight to Fiji is cancelled due to weather conditions. Since Four Christmases is set in San Francisco, it should come as no surprise that this means heavy fog. With every outbound flight cancelled, the couple find themselves stranded at the airport with all the other holiday travelers. Making matters worse, a news crew ambushes them and interviews them on camera live. Now that everybody in the city (including their families) knows they’re not going anywhere, they have no choice but to spend the holidays with their dreaded families, something they’ve successfully managed to do for years.
They first visit Brad’s father (Duvall, Tender Mercies) and brothers (Favreau and McGraw). The two brothers are professional UFC fighters. This means that they physically assault Brad at every opportunity. It’s not just playful brotherly horsing around either, it’s for real! One of them even allows his young sons to get in on the action. Everybody in that house constantly puts him down and embarrasses him. They don’t even appreciate the expensive gifts he brings.
Next stop: Kate’s mother (Steenburgen, Elf). It’s obvious she favors Kate’s perfect sister (Chenoweth, Deck the Halls) because she blessed her with grandchildren. Okay, the sister is a bitch and her young daughter is a rotten little brat. I won’t go into specifics, but the kid makes Kate chase her into a moonbounce in the backyard in order to retrieve a personal item that she grabbed. Things go from bad to worse when Kate’s mother volunteers her to play the Virgin Mary in a Nativity reenactment at church. As the day progresses , Brad and Kate learn embarrassing secrets about each other. Kate starts thinking that she might want a marriage and children, but Brad is adamant about keeping things exactly as they are.
Their day also includes an uncomfortable visit with Brad’s mother (Spacek, Coal Miner’s Daughter) and her much younger husband (Van Horn, Swingers) who also happens to be his childhood friend. I’m going to stop here, I don’t see the point in saying anymore about the storyline. None of it is funny and we all know damn well that it will culminate in a heartwarming feel-good ending. Did I say heartwarming? That may have been the intention of the filmmakers, but it’s more likely to cause heartburn than anything else.
Words can’t adequately express my loathing of Four Christmases. It’s mean-spirited, obnoxious, annoying and moronic. This movie is abysmal. I’m not a particular fan of Vince Vaughn. I don’t think he’s funny; he’s not even that good of an actor. His character here is thoughtless and selfish which makes it near impossible to feel any sympathy for him while his family mistreats him. I felt a bit more sympathy for Kate, but lost a bit of respect for Reese Witherspoon in the process. She’s an intelligent woman, what the hell is she doing in this lousy movie? At least Kate stood up for herself against those rotten kids in the moonbounce.
Four Christmases is a complete waste of a lot of things, but mostly talent. The cast boasts no less than five Oscar winners- Witherspoon, Duvall, Steenburgen, Spacek and Voight (as Kate’s father). Really, they should have known better than to get involved with this miserable excuse for a comedy. By all rights, it should have effectively ended the career of director Seth Gordon, making his feature film debut after the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. He makes all the wrong moves here, especially by opting for a feel-good ending that rings as false as a knock-off Prada handbag. At Kate’s father’s (Voight, Coming Home) house, we’re supposed to believe all is hunky-dory between her and the family members who were so awful to her earlier in the day. I call BS! Major BS! Christmas may be a time of forgiveness, but I don’t see how Kate can so easily forgive the humiliation to which they subjected her.
I could go on and on with my reasons for despising Four Christmases, but I don’t want to sound like some sort of madman so I’ll just leave it at this. Skip this one. It’s not funny, it’s not heartwarming and it’s not even remotely entertaining. It’s the cinematic equivalent to a lump of reindeer crap in your stocking.
