Four Christmases (Four Holidays in Australia and New Zealand, Anywhere But Home in the Netherlands, Norway, United Arab Emirates and in South Africa) is a Christmas-themed romantic comedy film about a couple who go to see their divorced parents in one day. The film is produced by Spyglass Entertainment released by New Line Cinema on November 26, 2008, the day before Thanksgiving, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as a San Francisco, California, couple pressured into visiting all four of their divorced parents' homes on Christmas Day. Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenoweth, Jon Voight, Jon Favreau, and Robert Duvall co-star. The film is director Seth Gordon's first studio feature film. The DVD and Blu-Ray was released on November 24, 2009.

Plot

No one enjoys the holidays more than Orlando "Brad" McVie (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon). Every December 25, this happily unmarried, upscale San Francisco couple embarks on a holiday tradition they have shared every year since they met - ditching their crazy families for a relaxing, fun-filled vacation in some sunny exotic locale. There, sipping margaritas by the pool, they toast the season, knowing they once again avoided the chaos and emotional fallout of their four respective households: divorced parents, squabbling siblings, out-of-control kids and all the simmering resentments and awkward moments that are the hallmarks of every family Christmas. But not in Christmas 2006. Shorts and sunglasses packed, Brad and Kate are trapped at the San Francisco Intl. Airport by a fogbank that cancels every outbound flight. Worse yet, they are caught on camera by a CBS 5 local news crew, revealing their whereabouts to the whole city... and to their families.

With no escape and no excuses, they are now expected home by Brad's father (Robert Duvall) and Kate's mother (Mary Steenburgen), as well as Brad's mother (Sissy Spacek) and Kate's father (Jon Voight), thereby celebrating four Christmases in one day. As they brace themselves for a marathon of homecomings, Brad and Kate expect the worst-and that's exactly what they get. But as Brad counts down the minutes to their freedom, Kate surprisingly finds herself tuned to the ticking of a different clock. At the end of the day, each will gain a new perspective on where they came from... and where they're going. Getting to know themselves and each other as they really are could finally give them a chance at the kind of love they've only been playing at. Kate decides she would like to someday start a family, scaring Brad away. Brad eventually comes back to Kate, surprising her at her door with the line "If we're going to have one, we must have two, so they can play together," as he realises how empty his life is and how much he loves Kate after spending hours alone at his father's home.

A year later on New Year's Day 2008, the couple welcomes their first born child in a hospital: a baby girl. They attempted to keep the child's birth a secret from their families, but once again they were caught on camera by a local news crew who was covering the first birth of the new year thereby revealing the arrival of the child to the city...and to their families.

Cast

• Vince Vaughn as Brad McVie (formerly Orlando)
• Reese Witherspoon as Kate
• Robert Duvall as Howard McVie (Brad's father)
• Sissy Spacek as Paula (Brad's mother)
• Jon Voight as Creighton (Kate's father)
• Mary Steenburgen as Marilyn (Kate's mother)
• Dwight Yoakam as Pastor Phil
• Jon Favreau as Denver McVie (Brad's brother)
• Tim McGraw as Dallas McVie (Brad's brother)
• Kristin Chenoweth as Courtney (Kate's Sister)
• Katy Mixon as Susan (Denver's wife)
• Colleen Camp as Aunt Donna
• Jack Donner as Grandpa
• Steve Wiebe as Jim
• Skyler Gisondo as Connor McVie
• Patrick Van Horn as Darryl (Brad's stepfather and former friend)
• Brian Baumgartner as Eric
• Cedric Yarbrough as Stan
• Creagen Dow as Sheep

One of the film's executive producers, Peter Billingsley, who had a starring role as Ralphie in the 1983 film A Christmas Story, has a credited role as an airline ticket agent.

Production

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."

The film began production in December 2007, during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which meant that no changes could be made to the script. During production New Line Cinema became a "unit of Warner Bros.", which put the film's completion at risk.

Reception

The film received generally negative to mixed reviews from critics. The film earned a "Rotten" rating of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 111 reviews. Metacritic gave the film a 41/100 approval rating, indicating "mixed or average reviews", based on 27 reviews.

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 clichés about Southern rednecks incongruously within the tony Bay Area." Variety magazine called it an "oddly misanthropic, occasionally amusing but thoroughly cheerless holiday attraction that is in no way a family film." 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." 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". Roger Ebert gave the film a meagre two stars, 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.

Box office

On its opening day, a Wednesday, it ranked #2 at the box office with $6.1 million, behind the previous week's new release blockbuster Twilight. 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. In its second weekend, Four Christmases held on to the #1 spot, taking in another $18.1 million.

As of January 8, 2009, the film has grossed $118.6 million domestically and $154.9 million worldwide.

Soundtrack

The motion picture soundtrack of the movie were originally available to download from Amazon (MP3 format) or iTunes(MPEG-4 format), 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 is released on October 6, 2009 by Watertower Music and now available on every retailers.

Tracklisting

1. "Baby It's Cold Outside" by Dean Martin & Martina McBride - 2:55
2. "(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays" by Perry Como - 2:51
3. "Sleigh Ride" by Ferrante & Teicher - 2:16
4. "Christmas All Over Again" by Tom Petty - 4:15
5. "Season's Greetings" by Robbers On High Street - 2:23
6. "Jingle Bell Rock" by Bobby Helms with The Anita Kerr Singers - 2:11
7. "The Christmas Song" by Gavin DeGraw - 3:24
8. "Cool Yule" by Louis Armstrong - 2:55
9. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Dean Martin - 2:33
10. "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby - 2:59
11. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" by Sarah McLachlan - 3:53

References

External links