FOUR CHRISTMASES - Blu-ray review

Note: In the following joint Blu-ray review, both John and Jason provide their opinions of the film, with John also writing up the Video, Audio, Extras, and Parting Shots.

The Film According to John:
How many Academy Award winners can a studio cram into one cast and still turn out a bad movie? In the case of 2008's "Four Christmases," the answer is five: Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, and Mary Steenburgen. Bad is bad no matter who's in it and no matter what the disc format.

The story, a romantic-comedy variation, concerns a fun-loving San Francisco couple, Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon), a boyfriend and girlfriend who have lived together for three years without a hitch. Things are going swimmingly for them until on their way to spend a Christmas in Fiji they find the airport fogged in, so instead of heading for the South Seas, they decide to visit their parents, each of whom is divorced and lives in the S.F. Bay Area. Four visits, four Christmases. But most of their relatives are so obnoxious, they test the limits of the couple's love for one another, and, worse, they're so obnoxious, they test the audience's limits.

The film's biggest drawback is that it can't make up its mind where it's going. For three-quarters of the story, it's all slapstick comedy, and then, for the last quarter, it turns all mushy and sentimental. The comedy is far too broad and dumb to be funny, and the ending is too gooey and false for a viewer to take any of it seriously. Besides, the transition from one extreme to the other is jarring. In other words, none of it works.

None of it works, including Witherspoon and Vaughn. You'd think they'd be able to carry anything, but the material here is so thin, not even they make anything of it. Witherspoon plays a character mainly exasperated, trying unsuccessfully to cope with a canceled trip to Fiji and the challenges of their families. She gets little that's humorous to do. Vaughn, on the other hand, has to carry the load, which he does by playing essentially the same character he always does: the slick, cool, put-upon know-it-all dude. It's not enough.

The first relative they visit is Brad's father, Howard (Robert Duvall), a grumpy old macho jerk. Worse, Brad's two brothers, Denver (Jon Favreau) and Dallas (Tim McGraw), are also visiting the dad, and they both behave like sub-cretins. Brad says they compete in the UFC, but they actually make money in backyard pickup fights. They make the Griswold's Cousin Eddie look like a NASA scientist by comparison. Most of the action here is of the knockdown, drag-out variety, with Brad's brothers physically attacking him, people falling off roofs, and the gags telegraphed a mile away.

The next relative they visit is Kate's mother, Marilyn (Mary Steenburgen), who seems to lust after every man she meets, including Brad. It appears the scriptwriters were going to follow this angle further, but it goes nowhere. Anyway, Marilyn is also a born-again Christian keen on taking Kate and Brad to Church, where a New Age, rock-star preacher, Pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam), holds forth. The disc's deleted scenes indicate the filmmakers intended this relationship to go further as well, but it doesn't.

The third relative they visit is Brad's mother, Paula (Sissy Spacek), an overage hippie now living with one of Brad's best friends from childhood. Obviously, seeing his mom living with this man half her age, this childhood buddy, doesn't sit well with Brad.

The final relative they visit is Kate's dad, Creighton (Jon Voight), the only sensible member of either family. As a result, Voight has almost nothing to do but stand around for a few minutes looking earnest and then disappear into the woodwork.

Seth Gordon ("The King of Kong") directed "Four Christmases" as though it were a TV movie-of-the-week. The dysfunctional family issues fall flat; the ridiculous caricatures are insulting; the film's pratfalls are more annoying than amusing; and even the children are horrible little people. Mercifully, the movie is brief at eighty-eight minutes, with each of the four episodes only about twenty minutes long. So, this mostly mean-spirited affair at least doesn't have too much time to get under our skin.

John's film rating: 4/10

The Film According to Jason:
There are not enough adjectives to describe the vile, mean-spirited, obnoxious, stereotypical Christmas comedy "Four Christmases." To think so many A-list stars are attached to this project is laughable. Starting with leading couple Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, there's also Sissy Spacek, Robert Duvall, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau, Mary Steenburgen, Dwight Yoakam, Tim McGraw and Kristin Chenoweth…all taking part in a movie from the guy who directed last year's documentary sensation "The King of Kong" and from four different writers with a grand total of five writing credits among them.

When their annual Christmas trip is canceled due to fog, Brad and Kate (Vaughn and Witherspoon) are forced to visit all their divorced parents on Christmas, thanks to a television crew that has outed their holiday plans. You see, they have told their parents they take part in humanitarian operations throughout the world every year, thereby ducking familial responsibility. So when the two are forced to confront their relations, a decidedly unmerry Christmas is in store.

It occurs to me that, as the years go by, that holiday movies become less and less good spirited and more and more evil. The thing that makes "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" my favorite Christmas comedy of all time isn't the hair-brained zaniness Clark gets himself into. Nor is it a group of eccentric family members. It is watching Clark do his very best to make the holiday everything it should be for the people around him. The comedy is organic to his bumbling character. "Four Christmases" missed that memo, opting to create stereotypical caricatures of every single character in the film. As each family visit gets progressively more embarrassing (for the audience, not Brad and Kate), all we really long for is a good, old-fashioned squirrel attack.

The two leads typify everything the older generation thinks is wrong with successful thirty-somethings. They have no desire to have responsibility to anything or anyone outside of themselves. There is no sense of obligation to suck up the idea of being part of an "out there" family. Lying is the norm, as are extravagant gifts designed to buy love and respect. Even in the opening scene, where "Kurt" tries to pick up "Daphne" in a bar, their excessive hubris shines through. If this is the type of role play that gets these two people off, fine. But it's not funny; it just shows how shallow they really are.

"Four Christmases" only goes downhill from there. The first stop is the airport, where the couple has made plans to spend the holiday in Fiji. These two yahoos don't dress as ordinary people, low key and respectable. Nope. They parade around San Francisco Internal Airport in gaudy heels, a slinky dress, and sombrero. Basically, they stick out like sore thumbs. As Brad's dim-witted father and brothers enter the picture…and his mother, shacking up with his childhood friend…and Kate's preacher-loving mother...we can't help but ask just how bad this movie is apt to get.

See, the introduction of each successive family member is cringe-worthy because there is no family in the world with as many low-hanging nuts as there are here. It simply can't be possible. And even if it is, for the sake of argument, what is the point in making Howard (Duvall), Paula (Spacek), Marilyn (Steenburgen) and the rest outlandish cartoon characters? What possesses Marilyn to volunteer Kate to partake in Pastor Phil's (Yoakam) nativity play? Why does the streaking of a child in Howard's house result in nothing more than a smirk and laugh from every available adult? This isn't funny; it's insulting.

It's even insulting for Brad and Kate. After three years of living together, they haven't once spoken about having children or getting married? Brad hasn't volunteered information about his real name, and Kate never came face-to-face with an inflatable children's play toy? At no point did either one mention their mentally challenged families, preparing the other for the day they may meet? And what about out-and-out lying on the most family oriented of holidays? Oh, it's just good fun to the movie, reality be damned.

Believe it or not, there is an actual, honest-to-goodness reality-based message buried within all the claptrap and bogus humor. Families tend to bring out the worst in a relationship; we can all agree on that. They exacerbate existing rifts between a couple, creating a level of stress not seen under the most dire of circumstances. "Four Christmases" gets to that point a couple times, but never bothers to explore it because there is another comic gold mine right around the corner in the form of an overly sexual mother and a terribly embarrassing game of Taboo, for example.

No one comes off as more lost in the movie than Witherspoon. Her usual perky, contagious happiness is thrown to the side and it's as if she doesn't know what to do or be. Vaughn comes off slightly better, though it's impossible to see how he attracts any women…or how his inner scrotum (thank you, Dan Savage) comes to dominate his life.

"Four Christmases" wants to be a story about people coming together during the holiday season to overcome differences. It has no hope of achieving that goal, thanks to a feebleminded script designed to move the audience in and out of comedy as fast as it can without developing the story proper. A plethora of talent is sadly wasted on an idiotic script. Stick with the clan Griswold or little Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" for holiday entertainment.

Jason's film rating: 3/10

Video:
For this Blu-ray release, New Line use a single-layer BD25 and a VC-1 codec to reproduce the movie in its native aspect ratio, 1.85:1. If none of this sounds too inspiring, it's not surprising. There's not a lot to reproduce in much detail. It's a rather simple, straightforward film, with nothing much more than images of a few household interiors to transfer to disc. The picture is somewhat soft most of the time, almost nondescript, actually, with colors ranging from bright and crisp to dim and dreary. There is nothing really wrong with any of it, but nothing stands out, either. Black levels look good, but shadow detail is just average.

Audio:
If the picture quality is pretty ordinary, the sound is even more ordinary, despite its coming to us via lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1. There's simply not much going on here because the soundtrack is primarily dialogue. There are no dynamics to replicate, no wide frequency response, no deep bass. There is just a smooth midrange and a touch of ambient musical bloom in the surrounds.

Extras:
The disc comes with a full complement of mainly promotional featurettes. First up is "Four Christmases: Holiday Moments," about eleven minutes wherein the movie's stars and filmmakers talk about their own Christmases but mostly talk about the film. Next is an HBO First Look: "Four Christmases: Behind the Madness," thirteen minutes that hype the movie further. After that is "Seven-Layer Holiday Meals in a Flash" (HD), ten minutes with down-home celebrity cook Paula Deen and one of the film's supporting players, Katy Mixon, cooking up a storm. Next is a two-minute gag reel, followed by seven additional scenes totaling about eight minutes.

Things wrap up with twenty-three scene selections; BD-Live access; a bonus digital copy of the movie for iTunes and Window Media (the offer expiring on November 24, 2010); a slipcover for the keep case; and, despite what the keep case says, English and German spoken languages; German, Dutch, and Spanish subtitles; and English and German captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Shots:
The question I would have to ask about "Four Christmases" is, Why? Why did so many good actors choose to be in it? Did they need the money? Did their agents talk them into it? Did they not read the script? Surely, they could have foreseen the disaster befalling them. It's like a Roman couple in 79 A.D. deciding to visit Pompeii for a vacation during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. But it's so pretty; look how the volcano lights up the night sky.