Four Christmases [Blu-ray]

Director: Seth Gordon Seth Gordon

Overview

A couple run the Christmas Day gauntlet as they strain to visit their divorced parents' four separate households in this Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon comedy from New Line and Spyglass Entertainment. The script was penned by the writing duo of Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson, with Vaughn set to produce alongside Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, and Jonathan Glickman. The King of Kong's Seth Gordon makes his feature directorial debut on the film. Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Dwight Yoakam, and Mary Steenburgen are set to play some of the in-laws in the pic, while Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw portray Vaughn's bullying brothers.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/06/2015
UPC:	0794043187636
Original Release:	2008
Source:	New Line Home Video
Language:	English
Sales rank:	18,955

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

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
Colleen Camp	Aunt Donna
Jeanette Miller	Gram-Gram
Jack Donner	Grandpa
Steve Wiebe	Jim
Zak Boggan	Cody
Skyler Gisondo	Connor
True Bella	Kasi
Patrick Van Horn	Darryl
Marissa Tejada Benekos	News Reporter
Cedric Yarbrough	Stan
Brian Baumgartner	Eric
Peter Billingsley	Ticket Agent
Alex Wurman	Composer

Technical Credits

Scott Moore

Jon Lucas

Caleb Wilson

Matt Allen

Peter Billingsley	Executive Producer
Richard Brener	Executive Producer
Michael Disco	Executive Producer
Toby Emmerich	Executive Producer
Mark Kaufman	Executive Producer
Guy Riedel	Executive Producer
Gary Barber	Producer
Roger Birnbaum	Producer
Jonathan Glickman	Producer
Seth Gordon	Director
Scott Moore	Screenwriter
Seth Yanklewitz	Casting
Vince Vaughn	Producer
Jon Lucas	Screenwriter
Juel Bestrop	Casting
Guy Reidel	Executive Producer
Caleb Wilson	Screenwriter
Jeff Wexler	Sound/Sound Designer
Matt Allen	Screenwriter
Reese Witherspoon	Producer

Editorial Reviews

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.