Four ChristmasesReview by Nathan Weinbender
It took four people to write the script for “Four Christmases”—one guy to watch every holiday comedy ever made, another guy to note every cliché of the genre, a third guy to assemble those clichés into a story, and a fourth guy to put it all into screenplay format. I’m guessing they took turns typing.
The movie stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as a disgruntled couple who escape to tropical locales every Christmas, telling their respective families that no, they can’t come over because, darn the luck, they’re doing humanitarian work in Burma.
This year, they’re headed for Fiji, but they’re stranded at the airport because of heavy fog. When they’re interviewed on the local news, their families see them on TV, and now they have no choice but to visit their loved ones. Since both Vaughn and Witherspoon’s parents are divorced, we are treated to four separate Christmases, all in the span of a very long 24 hours.
Before I go any further, let’s look at the movie’s cast. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon are big stars—talented, appealing, bankable. Their parents are played by Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen, all of whom have Oscars. That’s five Oscars if you also count Witherspoon’s.
What could have possibly drawn so many talented people to this script, which plays like a dour TV sitcom? Money, I suppose, and perhaps the prospect of not actually having to act.
The actors all play variations on characters they’ve played a hundred times before: Duvall is the backwoods hick, Spacek is the grass-roots bohemian chick, Steenburgen is the upper-crust socialite right out of “Good Housekeeping” and Voight is the voice of reason. How uninspired.
Wouldn’t it have been more fun had they switched the casting around, so that Voight was cursing and swilling beer and Steenburgen was eating pot brownies with her son’s best friend, who is also her lover?
Also in the mix are Jon Favreau, who recently directed “Iron Man,” and country star Tim McGraw, who play Vaughn’s uncouth brothers. They’re Ultimate Fighters, thick-necked and tattooed, and they put Vaughn in headlocks and wrestle him to the floor. Har-de-har.
And Dwight Yoakam plays Steenburgen’s beau, a preacher whose congregations are more like Super Bowl half-time shows. His character has the most potential—naturally, the script eschews his scenes in favor of brainless slapstick involving Witherspoon being urped on by babies and Vaughn falling off the roof while trying to install a satellite dish.
“Four Christmases” is obvious from beginning to end, and, in its desperation for laughs, it frequently substitutes chaos for comedy. Listen, future comedy writers: It’s not funny to have your characters just scream at one another, especially if they all do it at the same time so that, if they do happen to say anything clever, we can’t make it out over the pandemonium on screen.
I imagine that the actors in this movie could have come up with a smarter, funnier screenplay themselves.
Grade: C
Directed by Seth Gordon. Written by Matt R. Allen, Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Starring Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Favreau, Tim McGraw and Dwight Yoakam. PG-13; 82m.
The actors all play variations on characters they’ve played a hundred times before: Duvall is the backwoods hick, Spacek is the grass-roots bohemian chick, Steenburgen is the upper-crust socialite right out of “Good Housekeeping” and Voight is the voice of reason. How uninspired.
Wouldn’t it have been more fun had they switched the casting around, so that Voight was cursing and swilling beer and Steenburgen was eating pot brownies with her son’s best friend, who is also her lover?
Also in the mix are Jon Favreau, who recently directed “Iron Man,” and country star Tim McGraw, who play Vaughn’s uncouth brothers. They’re Ultimate Fighters, thick-necked and tattooed, and they put Vaughn in headlocks and wrestle him to the floor. Har-de-har.
And Dwight Yoakam plays Steenburgen’s beau, a preacher whose congregations are more like Super Bowl half-time shows. His character has the most potential—naturally, the script eschews his scenes in favor of brainless slapstick involving Witherspoon being urped on by babies and Vaughn falling off the roof while trying to install a satellite dish.
“Four Christmases” is obvious from beginning to end, and, in its desperation for laughs, it frequently substitutes chaos for comedy. Listen, future comedy writers: It’s not funny to have your characters just scream at one another, especially if they all do it at the same time so that, if they do happen to say anything clever, we can’t make it out over the pandemonium on screen.
I imagine that the actors in this movie could have come up with a smarter, funnier screenplay themselves.
Grade: C
Directed by Seth Gordon. Written by Matt R. Allen, Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Starring Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Favreau, Tim McGraw and Dwight Yoakam. PG-13; 82m.
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