Four Christmases (DVD)

Sometimes you watch a movie so bad that you feel like you’ve been too mean about other movies in reviews, simply because you’d forgotten how awful a movie can be. Four Christmases is one of those films.

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn play Brad and Kate, who are two horrible, self-centred people who like to lie to their family about doing charity work over Christmas, so that they don’t have to go and visit them. However, after a contrived problem at the airport which means they’re unable to jet off to Fiji, they end up on live TV (which miraculously every member of their family is watching) and a few phone calls later they have to visit all four of their parents the following day.

Unfortunately most of Brad and Kate’s family members are even worse than they are, and so we’re forced to witness their painful progression from house to house, as they get into endless problems ranging from putting up a satellite dish to having a pregnancy test stolen by a child. Trying to give all this a vague sense of plot progression is that while at the beginning of the film Kate said she didn’t want kids, she starts to think maybe she wouldn’t mind one, although the audience is more likely to think Brad, Kate and their families should all be sterilised.

It is a truly painful watch, full of scenes that aren’t just unfunny but almost insultingly dumb. It’s also a bit tough to take the film’s moralising about how bad Kate and Brad are for not going to see their families at Christmas, when Brad’s family in particular are just absolutely dreadful people who it would be fair enough to escape. Would you dutifully turn up each December if you were going to be beaten up by your oafish brothers, berated for trying to make something of your life and made to feel bad every time you try and do something nice for them? The film might actually make you feel sorry for Brad if he weren’t such a self-centred, arrogant prig.

According to the director, Seth Gordon, the film is about the difficulty all people have in reconciling who they are and the person they're supposed to be, but Four Christmas just features characters who are awful people, but who were actually supposed to be even worse, so who cares? Gordon was responsible for the excellent documentary The King Of Kong, but this leap into fiction isn’t half as successful.

Almost stunningly, this piece of tripe features five Oscar winners – Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen and Jon Voight – but even that amount of talent can’t do much with a movie that might have looked funny of paper, but is just awful on screen.

If you were wondering, I didn’t like this film.

The extras consist of some tedious deleted scenes and a gag reel that makes the film look more interesting to make than watch, so there’s not much light relief here either.

I’m just hoping the cast, who have all shown that they can be excellent in other movie, just chalk this one up to experience and pick their scripts a bit more carefully next time. They could also do with realising that playing odious people who deserve whatever they get, isn’t likely to make for an entertaining movie.

Overall Verdict: A film that’s almost enough to put you off Christmas altogether.

Special Features:
Gag Reel
Deleted Scenes
Trailer

Reviewer: Tim Isaac