Shawn's Four Christmases Review

2008 Movie #133 - Four Christmases

Here we have Vince Vaughn’s second go at a Christmas movie. Fred Claus wasn’t really a hard act to follow but somehow this one doesn’t even measure up to it. Of course given the insane amount of money this one made/is making I wouldn’t be surprised if we get his third attempt this same time next year.

Once again we’ll back to the reasoning behind my Hamlet 2 score, this movie is not funny. Oh it tries really fucking hard to be funny and wacky, but in the end it just ends up as a second rate, maybe even third or fourth rate, clone of Meet the Parents. Some scenes even felt like they were flat out fucking lifted straight out of that movie.

There sure are a lot of name actors in this thing, although I’m guessing the large budget for this movie meant they were compensated quite well. Most of the actors have little to do since the movie has a lot of ground to cover and only uses 80 minutes to try and cover all of it. As a result, the movie is very fast paced but that doesn’t work in it’s favour. Well unless you count the fact that means it’s over quickly. Mostly though we just a bunch of one dimensional, underdeveloped characters with unfunny dialogue.

The actors are all ok, although Vince needs to find a different act. We’ve seen him do this movie role many times before and it simply doesn’t work here. Also he looks huge! I don’t know if he was always like this but my god he looks like he could eat Witherspoon, who is also ok but their chemistry is never quite there except for a little in the car fighting scenes.

It’s a small concern but I feel I should mention the timeline of the movie. We’re lead to believe that just about this entire movie takes place over the course of one day. I’m sorry but unless each family lived on the same block, this is impossible. Hell even in that situation it’s pretty fucking unlikely. It doesn’t even become nighttime until almost the end of the movie. Small complaint sure, but it never stopped bothering me the whole time.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to get a good Christmas movie these days. This one doesn’t even really feel like a Christmas movie half the time. It’s better than other recent efforts such as Deck the Halls and Christmas with the Kranks (easily one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen) but it’s still not good. Once again, I just can’t recommend this one.

* ½ /5