To brand, then dismiss, Four Christmases as a disappointment would be giving it too much credit — never, for a second, did this New Line Cinema castoff scream or even whisper decent in the run-up to its opening. The story of couple Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Vince Vaughn) — not married, might as well be — who, fogged in on December 25, put their planned Fiji frolic on hold to visit their four divorced parents in the course of a single day, the movie doesn't offer a single surprise within its scant 82 minutes, which feel like at least twice that. There's happiness and cheer and more than the occasional tear dropped between shouting matches and withering stares, all preassembled and gift-wrapped by the ho-ho-hos at the Studio.
Sure, there was every reason to hope for more. Four Christmases was, after all, directed by Seth Gordon, whose 2007 The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was a bittersweet, hilarious documentary in which a cocky mullet squares off against a sweet doofus over a Donkey Kong machine. At first, word was that he had been hired to remake his fact as Hollywood fiction. Then, word was that Gordon was doing his home-for-the-holidays movie — the sure sign a comer had gone in the wrong direction. How cute, though: Gordon brought King of Kong's sweet doofus, Steve Wiebe, along to Hollywood to appear in Four Christmases. Alas, he says nothing and, in one scene, pretends to sleep on a couch.
Vaughn shouts and blusters; Witherspoon is just ... there.
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Rated PG-13. Opens Friday at San Francisco theaters.
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Still — Vaughn and Witherspoon, right? As sure a thing as pancakes and bacon on Christmas morning. But even there, the pairing is off. Whatever Vaughn has going for him — charming bluster, hellacious timing, velvet delivery, doughy good looks — he serves up times a thousand here: As big ol' Brad, the guy is turned up to 11. In the past, Vaughn has proven capable of lowering the volume without sacrificing what made him; he's rather good in the underrated The Break-Up, as unflinching as Four Christmases is phony. Here, he must have felt the need to shout just to be heard.
And Witherspoon is just ... there. And barely there at that, no doubt a condition brought about by standing next to Mount Vaughn, who tends to dwarf anyone with whom he shares a scene. As perky/grumpy poor ol' Kate, she starts out strong, role-playing as a take-no-shit barfly who screws Vaughn's wallflower put-on in a bathroom stall during the opening scene. But as the movie deflates (starting about two minutes in), so does she. Then again, it's hard to act in a movie that has you driving here and there and back again in barely more time than an episode of an TV dramedy.
It's also difficult to build a character when the writers — four of them, one for every 20 minutes — fail to create anything more than bland archetypes. (It takes forever just to find out Brad is a lawyer; we never do discover Kate's profession.) Their own parents being divorced, Kate and Brad don't want to get married. Life is rough. But Kate is having doubts: Hints are dropped early. Then whispers become screams as, one by one, they visit the folks: first, Brad's dad (a surly Robert Duvall); then Kate's mom (a horny Mary Steenburgen); then Brad's mom (a hornier Sissy Spacek); and, finally, Kate's dad (a patronly and oddly smooth-surfaced Jon Voight).
If you think one home-for-the-holidays movie is bad — and, until this year's A Christmas Tale, imported from France, there hadn't been a decent offering in the subgenre since Jodie Foster's, um, Home for the Holidays in 1995 — imagine a four-pack, but with just time enough for a single sitcom setup and the shrugging happily-ever-after at each. The pace here is lethargic; the movie desperately needs a laugh track, but the joke is terrible to begin with.
When Four Christmases isn't forced, it's simply lazy, as when the writers somehow jam Vaughn into a short-short robe to play the part of Joseph in Dwight Yoakam's church, where ... oh, did I mention Dwight Yoakam is in this? As are Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw as Vaughn's brothers, Denver and Dallas, both of whom are backyard amateur cage fighters. As is Kristin Chenoweth as Kate's baby-machine sister. Carole Kane and Colleen Camp are here, too. This thing is as star-studded as a Very Special Episode of The Love Boat. And, look, it's a Swingers reunion, featuring not only Favreau but also Patrick Van Horn, who was Swingers' Sue and now plays Brad's former BFF turned mom's lovey-dovey boyfriend. Ick.
There is, of course, the slightest chance that Four Christmases wasn't intended as a comedy. It's so irritating at times — the people, the screeching, the way everything looks washed out in a made-in-the-early-'80s way — that maybe Gordon was going for ironic, grim, and sad. Or perhaps it was gutted of its best moments. Surely something was left on the kitchen floor to get this thing under 90 minutes. Based on the evidence provided by King of Kong, Gordon is capable of better — to say nothing of Witherspoon, Vaughn, and their small army of co-stars. Really, Four Christmases is too benign to get too worked up about. For a worse Christmas movie, look back no further than last year's Fred Claus, starring Vaughn and that poor, poor Paul Giamatti.
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