Repulsive characters ruin unfunny holiday comedy 'Four Christmases'
Hanging out with unpleasant people during the holidays might be a family requirement for a few of us.
But why in the world would anyone want to hang out with the unpleasant, even repulsive, characters in the holiday film "Four Christmases"?
Even though "Four Christmases" clearly intends to be a warm and funny affirmation of family values, its cliche-riddled script and its stable of unstable, off-putting characters - married or not - undermine any of the comedy's potential joy to the world.
Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Chicago's own Vince Vaughn) waste no time in alienating most of their audience as lovers in a carefree, sexually charged relationship.
The height-incompatible couple makes a game of pretending to be strangers who run into each other at public places, then exchange some sexy verbal foreplay before rushing off to do the nasty in the nearest restroom.
Gee, that's sooooo romantic.
Every year during the holidays, they lie to their parents. They say they're on some noble mission in other countries helping the sick or protecting endangered species.
In fact, they just go off on an exotic vacation, free of guilt about not showing up at their annual family gatherings.
"You can't spell families without lies," Brad rationalizes.
When fog shuts down all flights out of San Francisco, and a TV news crew catches Kate and Brad trying to sneak off to Fiji, their families see them on TV and know they're stranded. Now, the couple must actually visit their relatives: two sets of divorced parents at four different houses.
Brad's Neanderthal brothers Dallas (Tim McGraw) and Denver (Jon Favreau), still stuck in a bizarre form of arrested adolescence, think they're a tag-team of pro-wrestlers. They practically break poor Brad's bones under the tacit encouragement of their redneck daddy, Howard (Robert Duvall on fake-laugh autopilot).
No wonder Brad doesn't want to head home for the holidays. His open-minded mother (Sissy Spacek) has taken Brad's former best friend as her new partner.
Meanwhile, Kate's family has enough issues to float two seasons of "Dr. Phil." Kate's sister (the underutilized Kristin Chenoweth), a poster model for motherhood, uses her baby to one-up Kate with a little sibling rivalry. Kate's mom (Mary Steenburgen) has hooked up with her slightly creepy Pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam).
Her dad (Jon Voight) drops by to trumpet the virtues of family values in a movie that clearly doesn't believe its own message, even when Howard bellows, "There's nothing more important than family," as if nailing the movie's moral into our heads with a sledgehammer.
Not to be outdone in the hypocritical touting department, lying Brad burbles, "Nothing beats being honest!"
With "Four Christmases" being marketed as a holiday family movie, cagey filmgoers can safely predict that by the closing credits, the unmarried leads will magically see the error of their single ways and conform to the middle-class marriage and carriage program, even though they were much happier lying to their dysfunctional, unlikable relatives, and especially to each other.
"Four Christmases"
Rating: 1½ stars
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight
Directed by: Seth Gordon
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for sexual humor, language. 82 minutes