Four Christmases - One Would Have Been Plenty

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Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon team up in this season’s holiday offering Four Christmases.  They play Brad and Kate, a extremely happy, unmarried childless couple.  They are blissful in their selfishness (the film’s opinions, not necessarily mine); avoiding family functions at all costs so they can spend the holiday season vacationing together in exotic locales.  However, after spending three such Christmases together, they are unable to get out of San Francisco as all flights are unexpectedly canceled due to a plot device…um, I mean heavy fog.  Their families catch wind of this and they are immediately guilted into spending the holidays with their families.  (They each have divorced parents hence “Four Christmases”.)  Of course, each person is embarrassed by their families repeatedly.  And I do mean repeatedly.  There were times when the movie felt more like Four Groundhog Days than Four Christmases. 

Four Christmases is a harmless little trifle that can be described as cute if one is feeling gracious.  It, however, cannot be described as funny.  Vince Vaughn has given up on being a “serious actor” and has decided to make a career playing Vince Vaughn.  And I’m fine with that.  But his rambling, nervous patter that was so effective in Wedding Chasers falls flat here.  His comedic riffing can be hysterical in how he deflates a recipient’s ego with rapid-fire backhanded compliments disguised in a sea of verbiage.  But here it’s all riffing and no jokes, as if the writers had created the core of his speeches and expected him to bring the funny later.  Well, he did not.

The movie feels like repeated improv scenarios that consistently fall flat.  “Ok, give me a wacky hobby…cage fighter, got it…now give me weird situation…installing a satellite dish…great suggestions…here we go.”  “Ok now I need a personality trait and public place…cougar and church…awesome!”  Unfortunately, this troop is incapable of mining any of this for laughs; as is evidenced by the movie’s 82 minute running time.  It’s not even as if there are jokes that don’t work.  There just aren’t any jokes.  It’s as if they thought the zany situations were hysterical enough to carry the film.  The cast includes Robert Duvall, Jon Favreau, Mary Steenburgen, Dwight Yoakam, Tim McGraw, Jon Voight and Sissy Spacek.  All of their talents are completely, utterly wasted in this film.  The movie isn’t so much bad as it is forgettable.  I promise you; in five years you’ll stumble upon this film airing on TBS or USA and you’ll be surprised by its very existence.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and 1 being Christmas With The Kranks, Four Christmases gets a 5.

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