Four Christmases

Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon star as a couple stuck visiting their four divorced parents on Christmas Day.

Four Christmases
Directed by Seth Gordon
(PG-13)

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A couple visits all four of their divorced parents over Christmas.

Vince Vaughn should swear off Christmas movies, said Richard Corliss in Time. After last year’s terribly unfunny Fred Claus, you’d think the actor would have learned his lesson. But Four Christmases is another “painful” comedy. Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon star as a “happily unmarried couple” stuck visiting their four divorced parents on one frantic Christmas Day. Just imagine “Meet the Parents quadrupled,” said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Director Seth Gordon has convinced four Oscar winners (Jon Voight, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Mary Steenburgen) to play the parents. These admirable actors seem to be “looking desperately for a way to crank Four Christmases into a good, rude farce.” But all they have to work with is comedy of the broadest type possible. Like many contemporary comedies, the film often aims to offend, said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Yet it mistakenly turns soft at the end. I like Four Christmases better when it’s at least trying to be different than the typical holiday comedy that’s as “indigestible as fruitcake and disposable as wrapping paper.”