Four Christmases

New review from The Movie Snob

Four Christmases (D). I cannot say I wasn’t warned. The previews did not look good. The Dallas Morning News gave it a C or a C-. But I was still a little surprised at how bad this holiday romantic comedy was. Vince Vaughn (Couples Retreat) and Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) star as Brad and Kate, a yuppie couple that is living the life in San Francisco–no marriage, no kids, just fun all the time. And to keep the fun alive, they leave the country every Christmas to avoid their parents (all divorced) and siblings. But when all outgoing flights are canceled, they suck it up and dutifully make the rounds. Their “eccentric” families are painfully unfunny, from Brad’s “ultimate fighter” brothers, to Kate’s newly religious mother, to Brad’s mother who has now taken up with Brad’s childhood best friend. How did they get this line-up of co-stars to be in this terrible movie? The film has Robert Duvall (THX 1138), Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner’s Daughter), Jon Voight (The Champ), Mary Steenburgen (Stepbrothers), Dwight Yoakam (Wedding Crashers), and others, for crying out loud. The scene in the tacky Christian church with the lame preacher (Yoakam) is among the worst. Still, I’d rather see this than see The Family Stone again.

Wedding Crashers; East of Eden

From the desk of The Movie Snob:

Wedding Crashers (C-). There were some chuckles in this buddy-flick-slash-romantic comedy, but not nearly enough to justify the two-hour running time. Owen Wilson (The Internship) and Vince Vaughn (Four Christmases) are buddies (and apparently divorce lawyers, judging from the opening scene with cameos by Dwight Yoakam (Four Christmases) and Rebecca De Mornay (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle) as a splitting couple), and they get their kicks by crashing weddings and picking up women at the receptions. Complications set in at their biggest crash of all – the wedding of the oldest daughter of the U.S. Treasury Secretary (played by Christopher Walken, Jersey Boys). Vince’s character gets mixed up with the Secretary’s psychotic youngest daughter Gloria (Isla Fisher, Confessions of a Shopaholic), while Owen’s falls hard for the sensible, sensitive middle daughter Claire (Rachel McAdams, Mean Girls). Vaughn and Gloria get most of the laughs, while the usually entertaining Wilson is mired in the laborious cliché of the main plot. Can he win the girl away from her jerk boyfriend, despite having met her under false pretenses? More importantly, does it have to take 119 minutes for him to do it?

East of Eden (B-). I completed my traversal of the James Dean trilogy by watching the DVD of this, which I think was his first major picture. Set in northern California in 1917, it is the story of brothers Cal and Aron Trask, who have been raised by their strict Christian father after the early death of their mother. Aron (Richard Davalos, Cool Hand Luke) is the favored and dutiful son, while Cal (James Dean, Giant) is the troubled ne’er-do-well. The plot is set into motion by Cal’s discovery that their father may have been less than forthright with him and Aron about what happened to their mother. Throw in some strong attraction between Cal and his brother’s girlfriend, and you’ve got a real soap opera on your hands. Worth a look, although I still don’t think Dean was a particularly good actor.