Ok, a family Christmas movie with A-type control freak Reese Witherspoon and motormouth, recidivist improviser Vince Vaughn. Could be terrible, right?
The conceit of “Four Christmases” is that married couple Brad and Kate (the aforementioned stars) spend ever holiday avoiding their parents cause both sets are divorced, meaning four sets of inlaws. But when a weather issue cancels all the flights going out of (what looks like) Chicago, the pair are forced to go and visit four sets of family members. Chaos and hilarity ensue, right?
It sounds predictable and awful, but note, the director is Seth Gordon, the documentarian behind the genius doc, “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” from last year (easily the best documentary of the year if not one of the most hands-down awesome and entertaining films from last year). For that reason alone, all cinephiles are hereby expected to a least give this flick a chance (or at least pay attention to the early reviews and if they’re not total shite, give it a shot). We’ll concede that it does look rather formulaic and stock though.
The rest of the cast is fairly impressive too and in-laws and family members include Jon Favreau, Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall, Tim McGraw (Vaughn’s family); Jon Voight, Mary Steenburgen and Kristin Chenoweth (Witherspoon’s family), plus Dwight Yoakam as a local Pastor. You’ll remember that early reports from the film had tensions between the two leads. Witherspoon’s production company is called Type-A productions for a reason: in real life she’s anal as fuck and her and “hey baby, I’ll show up on set and sorta learn my lines,” freewheelin’ Vaughn and her were apparently like oil and water on the set. We’ll see if some of that tension is on screen come November 26, right in time for Thanksgiving.
Note the use of Steelers Wheeler’s “Stuck In The Middle With You.” Somebody had to do it.