One out of four stars (Rated PG-13 for some sexual humor and language) Running time: 89 minutes. Reviewed at The Woodlands Tinseltown 17 on November 26.
How crude is “Four Christmases,” the holiday film that opened the other day? Let me give you an idea.
Reese Witherspoon is sitting on the potty taking a pregnancy test with one of those thingamajigs that you buy in the drugstore. Her bratty little niece barges in, grabs what she thinks is a magic marker and runs out to an inflatable jump-jump where a bunch of brash little kids are bouncing around with wild abandon.
Witherspoon is in hot pursuit and ends up inside the jump-jump, trying to retrieve the pregnancy device while the kids are pounding on her playing keep away. Finally Witherspoon yells out to the niece, “That marker in your mouth—I peed on it!” The little girl screams and drops it.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as the lowbrow humor that fails to delight. Five Oscar winners star or co-star, but their combined efforts don’t add up to a bowl of sour eggnog.
Witherspoon plays Kate, a San Francisco babe who has inexplicably lived for three years with man-child Brad (Vince Vaughn), a supposedly successful attorney who wouldn’t know a tort from a tart. The couple remain as live-ins, telling couples at a dance class, “We don’t want our relationship to turn into work.”
For three years in a row the couple avoids their families by feigning doing charity work in a Third World country. This year they intend to spend a week on vacation in Fiji. Only their best-laid plans go awry when the airport is fogged in and all flights are cancelled. Adding insult to injury, Brad and Kate are interviewed on local TV, which means their ruse has been exposed for all to see.
As a compromise, they agree to visit all four separate families—mother, father, mother-in-law and father-in-law—with “mistletoe” as the secret word to leave when things become uncomfortable.
Each family unit is so dysfunctional that the combined resources of Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and the Federal Reserve couldn’t begin to help.
A coarse (and unfunny) Robert Duvall heads up Brad’s family, featuring two cage wrestler brothers (Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw) with nothing else to do but place their other brother in painful wrestling holds that have Brad screaming loudly for what seems like five minutes. Have you ever sat in the emergency room of a hospital and listened to someone get a broken leg reset? You get the idea.
Then it is on to Kate’s wacky family, featuring her divorced mother (Mary Steenburgen), a lustful grandmother and a sister (Kristin Chenoweth) whose bountiful cleavage lures Brad’s creepy stares.
Brad’s mother (Sissy Spacek) has taken up living with his best friend in a totally tasteless scene while Kate’s father (Jon Voight) seems to be the only normal person in the bunch. All the while we are subjected to projectile vomiting, jabs at both organized religion and family values and other futile attempts at klutzy comedy.
About the only point of interest is to see executive producer Peter Billingsley play the ticket agent early on. Who is Peter Billingsley? Surely you remember Ralphie Parker from “A Christmas Story,” tops on the list of the Brown family favorite Christmas movies ahead of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Polar Express” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with Clark Griswold waiting in vain for his bonus check.
I would rather drive to El Paso with my mother-in-law in the backseat than sit through any part of “Four Christmases” again.
