Four Christmases Dvd
Gordon Neal
Four Christmases is a 2008 American Christmas comedy-drama film starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon with Robert Duvall, Jon Favreau, Mary Steenburgen, Dwight Yoakam, Tim McGraw, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Voight, and Sissy Spacek in supporting roles. The film is director Seth Gordon's first studio feature film.[2] It tells the story of a couple who must travel to four family parties after their vacation plans get canceled due to dense fog. The film was produced by New Line Cinema and Spyglass Entertainment and released by Warner Bros. Pictures on November 26, 2008.
Brad and Kate are an unmarried upscale San Francisco couple who have been together for three years. Because each of them comes from divorced parents and overall dysfunctional families, they are reluctant to marry and have children. To avoid their families at Christmas, Brad and Kate plan a vacation to Fiji, falsely telling their parents they are traveling abroad to do charity work. When a fog bank grounds outgoing flights, Brad and Kate are randomly interviewed by a television reporter at the airport about their now-canceled plans. The resulting broadcast puts their families on notice they are stuck at home for the holidays and forces Brad and Kate to visit their parents' homes in one day.
As Brad counts down the minutes to freedom, Kate studies their families' lives and takes a pregnancy test on a whim, which is negative. They keep discovering new secrets about each other they had previously been too embarrassed to share, such as Brad's real name being "Orlando", Kate being ostracized by her peers throughout her childhood, and how Brad's mom's new boyfriend is his childhood best friend. As they continue to learn about the things they hide from each other, their relationship strains.
Kate realizes she wants a deeper commitment with Brad, the prospect of which frightens him when she mentions it. When they finally reach Kate's father's house, she asks Brad to let her go in alone. Inside, she learns how her father has mended his relationships with his ex-wife and family for the sake of celebrating Christmas as a family. Meanwhile, Brad returns to his father's and they have a quiet talk alone. Brad realizes he fears ending up bitter and alone like his father, though the two reconcile before he leaves. Returning to Kate, they discuss marriage and children before embarking to Fiji.
Prior to Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon's casting, it was announced that Spyglass Entertainment had set Adam Shankman to direct for Columbia Pictures. Howard Gould was brought in to provide rewrites.[3]
Seth Gordon was brought in as director at the insistence of Vaughn, who had seen Gordon's documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a film, Gordon points out, which, like Four Christmases, has a "traditional three-act structure".[2]
On Rotten Tomatoes, Four Christmases has an approval rating of 25% based on 145 reviews and an average rating of 4.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Despite a strong cast, this sour holiday comedy suffers from a hackneyed script."[5] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a score of 41 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[7]
The Hollywood Reporter called the film "one of the most joyless Christmas movies ever" with "an unearned feel-good ending [that] adds insult to injury"; it criticized the film's script for "situat[ing] Hollywood clichs about Southern rednecks incongruously within the tony Bay Area".[8] Variety magazine called it an "oddly misanthropic, occasionally amusing but thoroughly cheerless holiday attraction that is in no way a family film".[9] The Associated Press said the film "began with some promise" then segued into "noisy joylessness [that] sets the tone for the whole movie"; the review noted that "Vaughn makes the movie tolerable here and there, but this kind of slapsticky physical comedy doesn't suit Witherspoon at all."[10] Frank Lovece of Film Journal International found "no core to their characters. They just embody whatever plot machination the movie needs at any given moment", and that, "Every predictable Christmas-comedy trope gets dragged out like the string of electric lights that is pulled from the wall to whipsaw through the living room".[11] Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, and wrote his review in the style of a pitch session between a filmmaker and his boss, whereby he derided the film's alleged lack of humour or narrative sense.[12]
On its opening day, a Wednesday, it ranked second at the box office with $6.1 million, behind the previous week's new release blockbuster Twilight.[13] It then went on to take the top spot each successive day from Thursday to Sunday, earning $46.1 million and ranking #1 over the entire extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend.[14] In its second weekend, Four Christmases held on to the #1 spot, taking in another $18.1 million.[15]
Four Christmases: Music from the Motion Picture was originally available to download from Amazon (MP3) or iTunes (MPEG-4), along with a digital booklet in portable document format which summarizes the credits of the album along with screenshots and other promotional images of the film. It was released on November 25, 2008, by New Line Records. The compact disc format was released on October 6, 2009, by Watertower Music.
So here's the pitch, boss. "Four Christmases." We star Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn as a happily unmarried couple whose parents are divorced and remarried, and since nobody is talking to one another, they have to visit all four households on Christmas.
First stop, Vince's dad. We'll get Robert Duvall. Mean old snake. Both of Vince's brothers are like extreme duel-to-the-death cage fighters. They beat the crap out of Vince, while ol' dad sits in his easy chair and verbally humiliates him.
So? We got five Oscar-winning actors, and they don't need to act much. There can't be any singing, boss. If McGraw doesn't sing, then Yoakam doesn't sing. It's in the contract. A most-favored-nations clause.
As an avid traveler with a boyfriend who is 4,349 miles away, I take every opportunity I can to get my tush on a plane and fly the eight or nine hours to go see him. So, when he and I discussed me coming to Denmark for Christmas in 2023, I took all of a minute to say yes.
The first week consisted of me adjusting to the time and playing games with my boyfriend. Then the holiday really started. I am a very antisocial person who cannot speak Danish, and while most of his family can speak English, they feel very awkward doing so. His family is so large that they have four Christmases, spread out so everyone can see each other, the first being less like Christmas and more like a get-together.
The lunch was filled with Danish delicacies such as their pancakes, which are not like American pancakes, but closer to closer to crepes. Thin, filled with jam, but nothing else put on top such as whipped cream or powdered sugar, and if you did, you were called a sweet tooth. They were also little, sugary, cooked biscuits that you tore apart and dipped in jam and then pushed into powdered sugar.
There was liver, which I tried; it tastes pretty much like chicken, but saltier and with a smoky flavor. If I could cook then I would attempt to make it myself. There was also a pudding that you put butter and sugar-cinnamon mix in, which had to be the best dish there. .
The singing of carols was unique, not because it was in Danish, but because they danced around the tree and then around the house in a line. I had never had that, and it was an annual tradition that my boyfriend was very excited for.
The dinner was absolutely delicious, consisting of pig that was cooked for several hours, duck, and chicken. There were two different kinds of potatoes, glazed and baked,but the gravy was my favorite part of the whole meal. I poured it on everything.
They sang some songs in Danish, and I could catch some melodies of Christmas songs I knew in English. The music was live, though, with a guitar, not something played on a screen or through a speaker. I liked the atmosphere most because it was small and intimate.
Our last Christmas was by far the biggest celebration. More than twenty people showed up. Everyone pitched in and the main dishes were fish or meat. The game at the end was unique: There was a dice that you rolled in the first round to see if you got a six, and if you did, then you got a present on the table. In round two, if you rolled for a six and then got to steal a present from anyone else. I managed to steal a few, ending up with chocolate when the night was over.
I think the greatest thing I saw when I was there was my boyfriend utterly surrounded by love and as jolly red in the cheeks as anyone could get, and how I received the same, even though no one knew me, besides me being his American girlfriend.
Fathers belittle their sons; brothers beat on each other; mothers neglect their daughters in pursuit of their next romance; and a father finally confesses to being a horrible role model. Plus, two people discover they have many more differences than they cared to admit. The lead couple live a Yuppie-fied life in which vacationing in exotic resorts seems to be the main engine of their relationship. Still, even the most awkward situation is mined for humor, and in the end, trite as it may sound, they find their way back to each other.
Lots of heavy-duty wrestling that, at first, seems purely funny until you realize there's a bullying element to it. Some yelling and screaming. A man falls off the roof clutching an antenna, starting a chain reaction that has the television smashed to bits and a fire igniting on the carpet.
Parents need to know that this romantic comedy is riddled with gags centering on major family dysfunction. And there's real bite underneath the laughs: The central couple (played by teen favorites Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn) finds out soon enough that they don't really know enough about each other, and their families beat them up -- both physically and emotionally. It's all played for laughs, of course, which takes some of the edge off, but younger kids may still wind up perturbed by the scenes of familial mayhem. There's also some swearing (including "s--t") and social drinking, as well as some innuendo and implied sex. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
93ddb68554