IN TRUE seasonal style, Four Christmasses combines a romantic comedy with an attempt at a heart-warming holiday story. Reese Witherspoon reprises her trademark blonde perkiness as Kate, happily cohabiting with boyfriend Brad (Vince Vaughan ) in San Francisco.
Brad and Kate’s life together is based on fun. They refuse to get married or have children and are happy simply to spend as much time as possible with each other. Each Christmas they go on holiday and tell their respective families they are doing charity work in far flung countries as a way of ducking obligatory family gatherings.
However, when their yuletide flight to Fiji is cancelled due to weather conditions, the couple are interviewed on television about their plight. Phone calls from their parents after seeing them on TV swiftly follow, and Brad and Kate are persuaded to visit each family household in turn on Christmas Day.
The logistics of the visits are complicated by the fact that both sets of parents have separated, meaning there are four separate visits to fit into one day. As Brad and Kate negotiate the usual fraught family politics, their previously sunny relationship is tested for the first time.
Four Christmases is a predictable romantic comedy, somewhat spruced up by some great performances from a well chosen cast. Robert Duvall is convincingly cantankerous as Brad’s brusquely avuncular father Howard, who sits in his armchair drinking beer and belligerently orders his adult children around.
In contrast, Brad’s beatific mother Paula, played by Sissy Spacek, is a winsome hippy, living in bohemian bliss with her new younger lover. Meanwhile Kate’s family comprises her voluble mother and sister, who delight in showing Brad Kate’s most embarrassing baby pictures, and her kind but distant father.
Witherspoon is on familiar form here, variously appealing and earnest. Vaughan adds some genuine warmth as the determinedly commitment free Brad, who is charming despite himself. Jon Favreau is mildly entertaining as Brad’s bumptious brother Denver.
Yet ultimately there’s nothing here that we haven’t seen in holiday movies and/or family dramas and/or romantic comedies many times before. There are a few funny moments alongside the numerous clichés, and the excellent cast gamely do their best with often one-dimensional characters.
This harmless holiday movie may be comforting through its sheer familiarity.
