Day 113: "You can't spell 'families' without 'lies'. You know what I mean?"

OK, fine.  It's the wrong time of year for this kind of movie, but I was intrigued by the trailer for Four Christmases.  The story of a couple who, for three straight years, have gone to great lengths to avoid spending the holidays with their families.  Lengths like "..going to inoculate orphans in Borneo...".  Now normally, I would consider this harsh, but in their particular case, I'll make an exception.  There are abundant, and funny, reasons why these families are to be actively avoided, BUT, the couple themselves are not blame-free themselves.  This is a funny, cruel, and at times, insightful look into everybody's family, because, everybody has at least one of these peoples' personality templates somewhere in their family tree.  The movie begins and goes about two thirds of the way through being absolutely hysterical, only to fall out of the comedy tree into the murky pool of sentimentality in the final act.  I should have known it wouldn't last. 

Vince Vaughn is at his usual snarky, sarcastic self here, and Reese "The Chin" Witherspoon is his lady love.  The two play very well off of each other, providing some really funny quotable moments early.  Unfortunately, you can tell that Vaughn isn't really comfortable with the romantic scenes (or maybe he's that good an actor, and I just am misreading his performance) which, coincidentally, is when the story grinds to a halt.  Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, and Mary Steenburgen play the couple's parents, a motley group that I honestly have no idea what they saw in each other to begin with.  Jon Favreau, Tim McGraw, and Kristin Chenoweth play the couple's siblings, each one funnier than the last.

If you do see this, you may want to consider turning it off after they visit the third parent, because that is when it gets stupidly sappy.  Up until then, you will be laughing really hard.  It's a shame that the filmmakers decided to change the tone of the movie, because this one was shaping up to go into my regular Christmas rotation.  A pity, really.  7/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!