Holiday comedy falls flat
Four Christmases is the kind of tired holiday flick that centres on familial disharmony where a couple enters the dark underworld of their clan gets attacked by siblings (usually with kicks to the crotch) has a heart-to-heart with their folks and finds the pair in a stronger union by the end. Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Vince Vaughn) play the typical DINK (double income no kids) couple vilified in movies — all work and no play as if eschewing the usual trappings of familial bliss makes one a horrible person. They do everything together — dance classes couples’ yoga — but have a deathly fear of marriage and children the result of having grown up in horribly poisonous dysfunctional families.
Each Christmas the couple ditch their families to escape on a tropical vacation. This year they’re headed to Fiji. After the requisite calls have been made to trick their parents (they’re doing charity work in Burma) they head to the airport where they learn that all flights out are cancelled. Worse a news team interviews them on TV catching them in the lie.
Now they’re forced to visit each parent — four visits a pretty impressive schedule considering that the film takes place in one day. First they visit Brad’s beer-swilling father (Robert Duvall) and his two psychotic UFC fighting brothers (Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw). Next it’s on to Kate’s blowsy mother (Mary Steenburgen) and her den of pasty-faced lecherous friends. Then they play boardgames with Brad’s hippy-dippy mother (Sissy Spacek) who also happens to be shacking up with Brad’s childhood best friend. Last they stop in on Kate’s father (a dazed Jon Voight).
By the time Brad and Kate have reached their final destination they’ve been pummelled and puked on terrorized by the elderly (crusty old people saying vile sexual things is hilarious!) and seen their relationship nearly destroyed. Yet for all the slapstick it’s a rote tired affair. Witherspoon and Vaughn work together gabbing incessantly but the jokes fall flat and are often ignored in order to provide enough explanation to drive the unwieldy narrative forward. You know a film is in trouble when it has to beg for laughs with multiple infant vomit jokes.
