Four Christmases

A.K.A. Meet The Parents: Christmas Edition

There’s only one thing more annoying than going to a noisy, annoying huge family event, and that’s watching Reese Witherspoon going through four of them in 80 minutes.

Four Christmases is Meet The Parents set during Christmas. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon play a couple that hates family gatherings. For the past few years, they’ve been avoiding every major holiday by claiming to be doing humanitarian work abroad. In reality, they’ve been off living their selfish holidays vacationing at foreign resorts.

When fog cancels their Christmas morning flight, they are seen on the TV by their families when newscasters (who have nothing better to do) interview them concerning their frustration. Their gig is up, so now they have to visit both divorced sets of parents and their families, making it four Christmases.

Of course, as they meet each other’s dysfunctional families and hear dreadful childhood stories about one another, they begin to bicker and fight, questioning their relationship. By the time it ends, there’s a perfectly placed holiday cherry on top.

Had Vaughn, friend co-star Jon Favreau (Swingers, Iron Man) and Kristin Chenoweth (Wicked, Pushing Daisies) not been in Four Christmases, it would have been unbearable. Between Vaughn and Favreau’s fast paced, witty and often-improvised lines that keep you laughing frequently and Chenoweth’s charmingly condescending character, you have a few things pulling you along in the story.

If you thought the trailer looked bad, know that it’s not as bad as it looks; it’s not much greater, but it’s not as bad. If you thought it looked funny, then this is your movie. Nothing can stop you from enjoying it, not even four hellish family reunions crammed into one unbelievable day.

Photo credit: Warner Bros.