Four Christmases

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

A crafty couple run the Christmas Day gauntlet by racing to visit their divorced parents' four separate households in this Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon comedy that proves the holidays are no time for relaxing. Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Witherspoon) have made something of an art form out of avoiding their families during the holidays, but this year their foolproof plan is about go bust -- big time. Stuck at the city airport after all departing flights are canceled, the couple is embarrassed to see their ruse exposed to the world by an overzealous television reporter. Now, Brad and Kate are left with precious little choice other than to swallow their pride and suffer the rounds. Along the way, they perform in a church nativity play at the behest of Kate's mother's (Mary Steenburgen) pushy pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam), contend with Brad's gruff father, Howard (Robert Duvall), and bullying brothers, Dallas (Jon Favreau) and Denver (Tim McGraw) -- a pair of trained UFC fighters -- and pay a visit to Brad's spacy, New Age mother, Paula (Sissy Spacek), who recently made waves in the family circle by marrying her son's childhood friend. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Screen: Color
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Vince Vaughn - Brad
       Reese Witherspoon - Kate
       Robert Duvall - Howard
       Sissy Spacek - Paula
       Jon Voight - Creighton
       Jon Favreau - Denver
       Mary Steenburgen - Marilyn
       Dwight Yoakam - Pastor Phil
       Tim McGraw - Dallas
       Kristin Chenoweth - Courtney
       Katy Mixon - Susan
       Colleen Camp - Aunt Donna
       Jeanette Miller - Gram-Gram
       Jack Donner - Gandpa
       Steve Wiebe - Jim
       Zak Boggan - Cody
       Skyler Gisondo - Connor
       True Bella - Kasi
       Patrick Van Horn - Darryl
       Cedric Yarbrough - Stan
       Brian Baumgartner - Eric
       Peter Billingsley - Ticket agent

• Director:

  Seth Gordon

• Producer:

  Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Jonathan Glickman, Vince Vaughn

• Screenwriter:

  Scott Moore, Jon Lucas

• Screen Story:

  Matt Allen

• Screenwriter:

  Matt Allen

• Screen Story:

  Caleb Wilson

• Screenwriter:

  Caleb Wilson

• Cinematographer:

  Jeffrey Kimball

• Composer (Music Score):

  Alex Wurman

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Bob Bowen

• Editor:

  Mark Helfrich, Melissa Kent

• Production Designer:

  Shepherd Frankel

• Art Director:

  Michael Atwell, Oana Bogdan

• Co-producer:

  Udi Nedivi, Derek Evans

• Associate Producer:

  Mary Rohlich

• Executive Producer:

  Peter Billingsley, Guy Reidel, Richard Brener, Toby Emmerich, Mark Kaufman, Michael Disco, Guy Riedel

• Set Designer:

  Dan Bradford, Dawn Snyder

• Set Decorator:

  Jan Pascale

• Costume Designer:

  Sophie De Rakoff

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Jeff Wexler

• Makeup:

  Gretchen Davis, Simone Aemekias-Siegl, Andrea Pino

• First Assistant Director:

  Rip Murray

• Camera Operator:

  Leo Napolitano, Daniel B. Gold, Geoff Haley

• Choreography:

  Joann Fregalette Jansen

• Casting:

  Juel Bestrop, Seth Yanklewitz

• Production Accountant:

  Diana Adams

• Unit Production Manager:

  Udi Nedivi

• Re-Recording Mixer:

  Brad Sherman, Elmo Weber

• Supervising Sound Editor:

  Elmo Weber

• Second Assistant Director:

  Christina Fong

• Special Effects Coordinator:

  David Waine

• Additional Editing:

  Julia Wong

• Supervising Sound Editor:

  Russell Farmarco

• Supervising Production Coordinat:

  Emily Glatter

• Post Production Supervisor:

  Jay Vinitsky

• Hair Styles:

  Yvette Rivas, Lisa Marie Rosenberg Alpert

• Additional Music:

  John O'Brien

• Production Supervisor:

  Matthew Spiegel

• Production Coordinator:

  Bonni M. Carmen

• Visual Effects:

  Crazy Horse Effects

• Hair Styles:

  David Danon, Katrina Chevalier, Jennifer Tremont

REVIEW:

• Holiday comedies are basically a pass/fail situation; almost no movie produced exclusively for people who are already at the mall and feeling seasonally inclined from hearing the Muzak version of "Santa Baby" 18 times is going to be an opus of hilarity. Holiday movies can, however, be really bad (or at least really mediocre, which is arguably worse), so it's not like there's nothing to strive for in the genre. Lucky for Four Christmases, it passes -- not with flying colors, but not by the skin of its teeth either. It's well acted and it's entertaining -- and who can resist a movie where Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau are brothers, and Robert Duvall is their dad?
  
  It probably helps that the premise is fairly unique. Happy couple Brad and Kate (Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon) have a great relationship, full of enjoyed mutual activities like ballroom dance classes and sexual role play. Like a lot of young people, they're long past admitting that their respective families are a zillion kinds of crazy, so every year the two orchestrate an alibi, drop gifts in the mail, and hightail it out of town for Christmas. Unfortunately, this particular year turns out a little differently when their airline gets grounded by fog on the morning of their departure -- an event that would only minorly change their plans, if it weren't for the local news anchor broadcasting live from the airport who catches Brad and Kate in the camera's crosshairs and effectively announces to their families that they'll be very much stuck in town for the holiday.
  
  So now, with no excuse to get them out of it, they have to visit all four homes of their collective parents in one day (which is an hour and 22 minutes in audience years). Each household is a different breed of funny/crazy/terrifying, starting with Brad's father, a grumbling old blue-collar retiree played by Robert Duvall. This stop consists of streaking redneck children, dad insisting he can install his own satellite dish, and continued attacks by Brad's amateur UFC brothers (Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw). Next it's off to Kate's mom's house, a WASPish, doily-covered suburban home full of catty passive-aggression and cougary repressed flirtatious outbursts (mostly toward Brad, since all other men in the house have been long since broken). Kate's mom (Mary Steenburgen) has recently discovered religion, which is to say she's dating Pastor Phil, a reverend/local celebrity from the neighborhood Pentecostal rock-concert-style revival church, and this creates an extra dose of weirdness for the couple, when she drags them to mass.
  
  So then Brad and Kate visit the next parent on the list, then the next -- you get the idea. It's a cleverly written movie, and outside the awesomely gross vomit gags and just-painful-enough-looking slapstick, there's always the underlying feeling that what you're seeing is eerily familiar. These are people you've been stuck with at parties or meals, trying desperately to avoid talking about politics, money, or any other disastrously substantive topic; the trashy ones who serve food you don't want to touch, the backbiting ones who talk smack about your marital status, the super normal ones who wait years to throw an awkwardness curveball at you by suddenly getting way, way into religion. It's spot-on "funny because it's true" humor, which may not be a particularly genius page out of the comedy playbook, but after a day of unwrapping presents with people who share your DNA -- and sap your will to live -- it doesn't have to be. ~ Cammila Albertson, Rovi