The wife and I had an opportunity recently to actually sit down and watch a movie! It doesn’t happen often where the stars align, we put the kids down AND we’ve got a movie on hand that we BOTH are interested in watching. I’d like to say that this was an awesome movie and it was time well spent… unfortunately that’s not quite the case. In fact, we had to watch this one in two sittings cause the first time we started watching it I fell asleep.
Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn play a couple who’ve been dating for quite a while and are on exactly the same page when it comes to marriage and family – not interested. They’ve very much in love but they are happy with the way their life is and they see no reason to move their relationship to that next level. They both come from broken families so the holidays are a time of year when they just like to get away. Each year for Christmas, just the two of them take a vacation far from their families. One year, they get fogged in and have no choice but to spend Christmas with all 4 families… hence “Four Christmases“.
From here on out from a plot perspective it’s pretty straight forward. They move from house to house celebrating Christmas with their families and “hilarity ensues”. Of course during the day they reconsider their feelings about family and marriage and they are forced to work through some issues.
I won’t say there aren’t some funny moments in here because there absolutely are. The dialogue is “snappy” and Vaughn and Witherspoon work very well together on screen. Additionally, the secondary cast has some big names in it – Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Jon Fanvreau, etc.
If you’re looking for a good Christmas movie there are better options out there. This is decent for a date night movie and if you’re a Vince Vaughn or Reese Witherspoon fan you’ll probably enjoy this. Otherwise I’d probably pass.
