Four Christmases Review

Four Christmases
A couple struggle to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day.

by Helen O'Hara |
Published on
Release Date:

26 Nov 2008

Running Time:

88 minutes

Certificate:

12A

Original Title:

Four Christmases

It appears that Vince Vaughn is trying to become Mr Christmas, following last year’s Fred Claus with this similarly weak holiday-themed effort.

He and Reese Witherspoon play a seemingly perfectly happy couple whose annual holiday abroad is delayed by bad weather and who are therefore forced to spend Christmas Day touring around their four parents’ households. The families are played by an all-star cast – Sissy Spacek, Robert Duvall, Mary Steenbergen, Jon Voight – but any laughs they conjure up are lost in a weak script, unconvincing characters and the fatal lack of chemistry between the leads.

Witherspoon does her best to convince us that she and Vaughn could do anything more than work together, but the banter between them feels as incongruous as their wildly disparate physical appearances. Better just watch one good Christmas movie instead.

Witherspoon works hard to convince us otherwise, but this is a miscast mess. Definitely a turkey rather than a Christmas pudding.
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