And so onto the penultimate Christmas movie before the big day. This week we (hopefully) play it safe with a Christmas film released in 2008. Apparently, according to the tagline; "for them the holidays are a real nightmare.....". Is this true? Let us find out about their;
Four Christmases
As we've said, Four Christmases was a 2008 Christmas release, starring Reece Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, John Voight, Mary Steenburgen, Kristen Chenoweth, the list goes on.
In fact you will probably have to sit there with IMDB, to answer that ever present question;
"I know him/her from somewhere, what were they in?"
So all in all a pretty decent cast.
Reece Witherspoon is absolutely gorgeous as ever, playing Kate. Kate is in a relationship with Brad, (Vince Vaughn). Who between them have managed to avoid any Christmas holidays with their respective parents, who are all seperated or divorced, (hence the title. Four parents, Four Christmases).
Each year Brad and Kate spin out a tale of them doing charity work overseas, when in fact they are living it up in Fiji, for the festive period.
Except this year. This year, a fog bound San Francisco airport puts pay to their travel plans and an inoppurtune appearance on the local news, means that their secret is out.
There is only one thing for it, they will have to visit each parent and their families in turn.
There's the synopsis. The rest of the film follows Brad and Kate and their unravelling relationship, as they descend on each parent in turn. The laughs are plentiful and hearty. The feelgood nature of the film is kept fairly low key, but inevitably with this style of Christmas movie, you have a happy start, a falling apart, followed by a triumphant ending, where it is all good again. It's no different with Four Christmases, but the storyline is really quitegood. The layered approach with the multiple supporting characters enhancing the absurd arrangments and behaviours of the families, brings a fresh approach to the festive feelgood film.
Notable performances for me are Reece Witherspoon, (totally gorgeous). Along with Vince Vaughn, they seem to bounce off each other, which is required in this film. Jon Voight and Robert Duvall as the fathers are fantastic and so natural. However, my favourite has to be Mary Steenburgen, who looks to be getting younger, as she gets older. She puts in a sterling performance as the cougar style mother of Kate. Mary Steenburgen also starred in another of our favourite Christmas movies; One Magic Christmas and is as lovely now as she was then.
Overall Four Christmases is a good family, funny, festive film. Running in at just 88 minutes, it is not too long, so can be enjoyed when you have an hour or so to spare. There are some great laughs in it too, with a soupçon of romance and a mere hint of sadness. So it is not too heavy at all. In fact it is most enjoyable.
I really wished we had started doing a scoring system for films, but 139 films into this blog, I'm not sure I want to go back through them now, however just say that we did, Four Christmases would certainly get a good 7 out of 10.
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