|
|
 |
| |
Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughan get into the spirit of Christmas |
Ghosts of Christmas
films past
FOUR CHRISTMASES
Directed by Seth Gordon
Certificate 12a
AFTER sitting through this holly-decked tripe, I can’t help feeling a little Scrooge-like.
I can’t help but think Ebeneezer’s attitude to December has much going for it. This general anti-Xmas feeling has been spurred by a dose of the awful annual film nonsense released, like the Argos catalogue, to chisel your hard-earned lucre out of you.
Christmas comedies (think Miracle on 34th Street or The Santa Clause) are the cinematic version of those polyester Santa hats flogged on market stalls, singing Santa gnomes and reindeer hair bands. Genuinely funny Christmas-themed films are few and far between, and I am afraid this offering, starring Vince Vaughan and Reese Witherspoon, has not added to the skimpy quota.
Vaughan and Witherspoon are the smug couple who wriggle out of visiting their folks by claiming they are spending the holidays doing some good deeds in a developing country. Instead, they are off scuba diving in a tropical paradise.
While you are supposed to be on their side, by being introduced to them this way, you instantly lose sympathy. When their San Francisco flight to Fiji is fog-bound and instead they have to traipse around four different households of people suffering from various degrees of lunacy (how did such families manage to produce two leads who are seemingly so perfect, you may ask?) you are entitled to think: serves you right. The one genuinely funny moment (and I tell you this in case you doze off) involves a scene where Brad’s (Vaughan) horrible brother plays that game where you have to describe a person and they say who it is. Otherwise, it chooses weak targets – trailer trash who are either fanatical about Jesus, sex or wrestling, and how these two hip urbanites are embarrassed by their families.
Of course, it turns out all right in the end, because no matter how awful these people are, they are family, after all, and it is Christmas. Wake me up in the New Year, please. |
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
