Movie Review : Four Christmases

If in Indonesia, the great holiday is Idul Fitri, if in China or Hong Kong, its great holiday is Chun Jie (or known as the Chinese New Year or Zhong Guo Xin Nian), and if in the United States, its great holiday is Christmas that join with the end of the year. As well as Indonesian people are busy to go back to their villages, the Americans on average take off on Christmas day to find time to meet again with their big families. Feel a traffic jam, jostling to buy a present, to meet all family members who had separated a year seemed to become a tradition for them.

Except for the couple of Brad and Kate. Both couples are two people who had long lived cohabitation and mutual affection, but they do not want to commit ourselves to each other in marriage. Both also do not like with a serious relationship, have children, and families - especially because the parents of each Brad and Kate are divorced. So how do they outsmart Christmas Day? The answer is by lying to their families. Both always say if they were going to do humanitarian missions, but actually go out together at a far distance. Unfortunately, while this year they want to do the same thing, their plane was delayed for a day and they abruptly shot on TV. Now Brad and Kate have to celebrate four Christmas consecutively on four of their families who are equally dysfunctional.

Predictable what will happen later. Brad and Kate will meet with their families who have three years they do not meet, face many funny things and tacky in the middle of their unique family (if they are a normal family, will not be called to lift the film, is it right?). I know that this is a comedy movie so I was not much hope Seth Gordon dare raise issues that are too sensitive. After all, who wants to go to the movies on vacation and then come out with a bad feeling ? The same formula applies to The Ugly Truth, or The Proposal this year. Unfortunately, Four Christmases does not have scenes of the movie as funny as I mentioned above. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon are actually familiar with the genre of this kind and can not develop many of their games because of a script that limited the space for them.

Four Christmases falls as a responsible film in my eyes. Actually, he kept a lot of potential to be developed further, especially after the first half. When Brad and Kate's first time to reflect how many discrepancies they have after spending time with their families, I really hope that this film could be further developed and the impress with family messages or a deep relationship. Do not Click and The Break-up (in fact the second film was also played by Vince Vaughn) are both silly at first, but towards the end to give the audience something to ponder? Unfortunately, the director, as I said above, seems hesitant to push this film up to that point and instead, I felt he was in fact using a shortcut to resolve the conflict in this film that the impact of audience is less felt.

Overall, Four Christmases is a standard comedy-drama film. If just to watch the day before Christmas with a boyfriend or girlfriend is still fine, but for the rest, it is nothing special from this movie.

Movie Details
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon
Running Time: 88 Minutes