First, a little back story. My wife is Christmas crazy. I promise her once a year to hit the theater to see a new Christmas movie. Usually its garbage like Christmas with the Kranks, Surviving Christmas, or Deck the Halls. Last year I had hopes with Fred Claus but was let down. Looks like Vince Vaughn is giving it another shot this year. Four Christmases is about Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon being a couple totally in love but also totally against marriage and children. They became this way because their families are so dysfunctional, both sets of parents are divorced. Every year during the holiday they pretend to be doing charity work in third world countries so they don’t have to see their family. They actually go off to tropical islands to be alone. This year a fog rolls in and cancels all flights. While at the airport they get interviewed by the news and their families see them on TV. So they’re forced into visiting four houses for Christmas. Final verdict… it wasn’t that bad. I’ve seen some crap Christmas movies but this one actually gave me some laughs.
I guess you could say this movie is broken up into 4 parts. The first part is Vince’s dad. Robert Duvall plays the father who treats Vince like crap and thinks he looks down on him because doesn’t have a lot of money. His brothers are played by Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw. According to Vince, they are trained UFC fighters and constantly put submission holds on him and beat him up. There were some funny moments here that had me laughing out loud. The 2nd part is Reese’s mom played by Mary Steenburgen, who is recently involved with a pastor and getting more serious about religion. She calls the house a “cougar den” and its basically a bunch of older aunts, a sister, a grandmom, and a mom that love Vince and totally trash Reese the whole time about her past. There were also some funny moments here just having Vince interact with the family.
The third part of the movie is Vince’s mom. Its probably the shortest part. His mom is Sissy Spacek and lets just say her new relationship doesn’t sit well with Vince. While at this house we find out that Vince and Reese really don’t know as much about each other as they think, which ends up being the major theme of the movie. The 4th and final part is Reese’s dad played by Jon Voight. Here the movie loses all comedy and becomes a little more serious. This is also the part where everything wraps up. There’s nothing totally shocking here but that’s OK. It’s a Christmas movie and you want to leave feeling upbeat and happy. All in all, the movie surprised me because I thought it was going to follow in the footsteps of crap I’ve seen over the last several years. Don’t get me wrong this is no Christmas Vacation, or even Elf to get more modern with Christmas comedies, but it’s a decent holiday movie that has a good amount of laughs.
IMDB – 5.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 26%
Movie Wiseguys – 6/10