Aiming For Humor, Baywatch Plays Down To Its Low Expectations.

The Good: The acting is not, actually, terrible
The Bad: Obvious character arcs, Predictable plot, Not actually funny
The Basics: Baywatch is about as bad as one might expect it to be.


My wife has had Futurama on as our background show while we sit together and work in our living room. I was amused when Pamela Anderson's head popped up early in the series to reference the Baywatch movie, the first film to be shown in all slow motion. The joke was enough to get me to bother with the theatrical release film version of Baywatch.

I was not a fan of the television show Baywatch, but it was on quite a bit when I was childsitting in the 90s, as my charge liked it. So, I had a pretty basic idea of who the characters were in Baywatch and the basic plot when I went into the new Baywatch film. And yeah, it's about as good and as bad as one might expect of a movie based upon the television show Baywatch. Baywatch is an R-rated comedy and it very quickly lives up to that with multiple characters saying "fuck" pretty early in the film to establish the tone.

The Emerald Bay lifeguards under the leadership of Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon and Stephanie Holden are holding their annual lifeguard try-outs with an uncommon three positions available. Ronnie Greenbaum, a generally out-of-shape young man who has a crush on lifeguard C.J. Parker, and Summer Quinn are among those competing for one of the three positions. Leading up to the try-outs, Mitch notices an increase in the drug Flaca literally floating into his beachfront. Mitch is also saddled with Matt Brody, a past Olympic swimmer, appearing and telling him that he has been assigned to the baywatch. Mitch and Stephanie reject the idea that he was assigned without him having to try out. Matt actually manages to prove himself as having potential to be a good lifeguard, so he joins the team.

While Ronnie, Summer and Matt are trained, Emerald Bay falls prey to the machinations of Victoria Leeds, a woman who owns a local club and is in the process of bribing a city councilman for a real estate deal. When the Councilman fails to deliver, he winds up dead and the Emerald Bay lifeguards become involved when his body is disposed of on a flaming boat with a handful of women who are aboard the boat when it is blown up. While the lifeguards protect swimmers, sailors, and sunbathers from drowning, thieves and accidents, they work to thwart Leeds's plans and stop the drugs that are being smuggled through the beach.

Baywatch is not at all intended to be high-minded or complex. Instead, it plays off the nostalgia for 90's television, much the way 21 Jump Street (reviewed here!) did before it. Baywatch shakes up the familiar slow-running, boobs(!), formula by adding an element of crude humor. The humor is generic - Ronnie falls on a wooden walkway and gets his penis and balls lodged between two slats, Mark is pranked to fondle a corpse - and not overly funny.

Baywatch is a flick that follows the predictable formula otherwise. The movie includes several rescues, characters running in slow motion and plenty of plot conceits that (regardless of what the characters within the movie argue) should be handled by the Coast Guard, FBI and/or local police. Baywatch is momentarily fun in that it references its own plot faults and its own appeal. Alexandra Daddario's Summer calls out Mark for checking out her breasts, for example.

The character arcs and plot conceits are both fairly predictable; Baywatch is not seeking to redefine its own appeal, rather play to its base. That said, the performers in Baywatch do a decent job with the material they are given. Dwayne Johnson does fine as Mitch, though it is not a role that requires him to actually utilize much of his range, and he gets through the physical aspects of the role without any apparent strain. Zac Efron bulked up for the role of Mark and he is credible in the role of an arrogant athlete who feels entitled to his position. Ilfenesh Hadera has a delivery that lends authority to her lines and Priyanka Chopra is a very good villain as Leeds. Alexandra Daddario has had vastly more complicated roles than her position in Baywatch as Summer, but she does what she can with the material she is given. Similarly, Kally Rohrbach and Jon Bass might have a painfully obvious arc to play, but Bass does fine as the butt of a lot of jokes and Rohrbach manages to appear sympathetic to his character.

Ultimately, Baywatch is exactly the type of vacuous comedy audiences expect of a comedy competing during Summer Blockbuster Season; it is not intended to be great or even enduring entertainment, but it is enough to justify spending a couple bucks on for people who don't have air conditioners at home.

For other films currently in theaters, please check out my reviews of:
Wonder Woman
Alien: Covenant
Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 2

2.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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I’m The Stick In The Mud At Identity Thief

The Good: Moments of humor, Moments of character
The Bad: Exceptionally predictable plot and character arcs, Repetitive (unsuccessful) jokes, No superlative performances, Pacing
The Basics: Entirely predictable and surprisingly boring, Identity Thief is an unenduring comedy.


Tonight was date night. After a few weeks of procrastinating, I took my wife out to the movie of her choice, which was Identity Thief. She is a fan of comedies, Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy. I’ve been a fan of Melissa McCarthy since Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!) and I was thrilled to see her have a real breakout in the mass pop culture with Bridesmaids (reviewed here!). Unfortunately, Identity Thief breaks her streak. I might be the exception to the rule, but for as much as my wife laughed throughout the movie and for as much as people after the showing we went to tonight seemed to be talking the film up, I noticed there were very few instances of sustained, collective laughter in the theater tonight.

I think it is because Identity Thief is not actually all that funny. We watched the film in anticipation for humor that never truly broke out and while there were one or two surprises, Identity Thief more often goes for the lamest jokes possible. Identity Thief is not even particularly crude – outside a sex scene between Melissa McCarthy’s Diana and Eric Stonestreet’s Big Chuck – it’s just not funny. So, for example, in the first half hour, virtually every character that Jason Bateman’s Sandy Patterson meets, comments on how he has a girl’s name. Really? That’s the best you’ve got writer Craig Mazin?! The only really funny recurring joke is the repeated throat punches from Diana to characters throughout the flick. Outside that, most of the humor comes from Bateman’s usual understated delivery and the rest of the movie is essentially one, drawn out hour and a half long fat joke (there is an additional half hour to the film that is, admittedly, not just a fat joke). Viewers deserve better.

Opening with Diana calling financial wizard Sandy Patterson and “enrolling” him in a fraud protection service for his credit card (while, in fact, duplicating his credit cards to max them out), Sandy joins his friends and co-workers in turning their back on the financial management firm they work for to strike it out on their own. But Sandy’s first day working with Daniel is turned upside down when a routine traffic stop (while he is on his cell phone with his credit card company) turns into an arrest and interrogation for a drunk and disorderly that Diana as Sandy has failed to appear for in Florida. When the police are particularly incompetent at delivering results, Sandy hatches a plan to go down to Florida to get the “other” Sandy and bring her back to confess to his boss, so the police can apprehend her.

Sandy finds his identity thief remarkably quickly and after a fight on the highway and at her house, bounty hunters who are hunting her for drug-related crimes attack and the two find themselves on the run together. Pursued by police and bounty hunters, the pair begins a cross-country trip from Florida to Denver going through all their cash, multiple cars, and several cars and growing closer for their shared struggles.

Identity Thief is written as one of the most painfully predictable movies I have seen of late. The road trip/shared struggle/opposites attract themes are so overdone that almost all of the reversals can be called in the first few minutes. Even Sandy taking a stroll on the dark side by using his ex-boss’s identity to get cash is not entirely unforeseen. In fact, the more I consider Identity Thief, the more it reminds me – especially with its violent reversals – of Date Night (reviewed here!), except in this incarnation of the basic plot, the characters are not working to get back together and the mistaken identity aspect is a misappropriated identity issue.

The characters in Identity Thief are more “types” than individuals. Diana is a thoroughly predictable con artist and Sandy is a straightlaced foil character who comes to appreciate some of what she has gone through simply by spending time with her. Identity Thief might have actually been funnier had Sandy actually stuck to his righteous indignation and let the comedy come from Diana spinning her wheels trying to escape and rationalize. Alas, that is not this film. Instead, the story meanders from one pointless encounter to another (though the scene with the snake is delightfully gruesome for delivering a real comedic punch) until the inevitable and obvious resolution.

Jason Bateman is playing within his niche, as is Melissa McCarthy. Neither one presents anything viewers have not seen from them before. Eric Stonestreet’s appearance as Big Chuck actually begins feeling different and audacious for him, but the moment he removes his hat, the character changes into something painfully familiar for his fans.

That actually seems to be the bane of Identity Thief; it’s entirely predictable, structured, and familiar. The violence is not over the top so it never becomes truly unpleasant for the viewer to watch the comic mayhem unfolding, but the chaos is hardly all that funny. While I thoroughly acknowledge that the film has been tearing it up at the box office, it seems more like success built on the winter blahs than on any actual quality in the film. In fact, given that my wife – who loves this style of humor and enjoyed Identity Thief - mentioned pointedly that while she enjoyed the film, she did not want it for her permanent collection the moment we got into the car, Identity Thief strikes me as a flash-in-the-pan success; it’s having its heyday now, but by the time it is released on DVD and Blu-Ray those who made it so big at the box office now will have completely forgotten it.

For other works featuring Melissa McCarthy, please check out my reviews of:
The Hangover Part III
This Is 40
White Oleander
Charlie's Angels
Go

2.5/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Charlie Day Is More Active Than Jason Bateman In Horrible Bosses, A Shockingly Average Comedy Ruined By The Previews.

The Good: Funny, Great cast
The Bad: Fails to pop, Stretches without humor, No character development.
The Basics: Horrible Bosses is another comedy that was worth watching once, but is not going to light the world on fire.


Every once in a while, I think it helps my readers to clarify my standards for my ratings. I mention this because I know I bombard my readers with the constant lament that virtually every film I've looked forward to lately has been ruined by excessive previews which end up showing all of the best parts of the movie. Horrible Bosses suffers for exactly that reason, but when considering the film objectively, it made me think that I ought to once again clarify my rating system. On the ten point scale, ten is absolute perfection, zero is absolute waste of time. 9.5 is usually reserved for virtually perfect works, with .5 usually being reserved for "this just isn't the worst piece of garbage ever. 8 - 9 are Excellent, 7.5 - 6.5 would be classified as "above average," with 6 - 4 being the broad range of "average," 3.5 - 2.5 are "below average," and anything below that is "poor." I mention this at the outset of my review for Horrible Bosses because the movie was far more average than actually bad. In fact, I enjoyed the movie, but rated with objective standards, it is a remarkably average movie on the low side of average and not one I would pay to see a second time.

My wife and I went to see Horrible Bosses with a whole lot of enthusiasm today. My wife is a big fan of comedy, she loves Charlie Day - as she's a big fan of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia (reviewed here!) - and we are both fond of the works of Jason Bateman. So Horrible Bosses was set to be a real treat for both of us. Unfortunately, I found that the best moments were the ones in the trailers and that there wasn't much more to the movie outside that. I also realized that since Date Night (reviewed here!), I've seen a lot of rated-R comedies that involve car crashes.

Horrible Bosses is a pretty simple concept comedy that doesn't develop far once the concept is introduced. In fact, it takes a while for the main plot concept to be introduced and once it's there, the movie obsesses on it and then comes to a fairly predictable conclusion.

Nick, who hasn't had sex with anyone else in six months, works from sunup to sundown at Comnidyne under Harken, a cruel bastard who keeps him under his boot with the hope of a promotion to Senior Vice President Of Sales. Dale, newly engaged, works for Julia as her dental hygienist. All Dale wants in life is to be a husband and all Julia, inexplicably, wants is to have sex with Dale. Kurt is the accountant working at the chemical company Pellit & Sons under the kind Jack and his dipshit cokehead son Bobby. Jack has a heart attack and Bobby inherits the company, which he plans to squeeze for all the profit to buy drugs and hookers with, putting Kurt in an untenable long-term situation. One night over beers, the three muse about how their lives would be easier if their bosses were dead and Kurt and Nick - who has been passed over for the promotion that Harken has given himself - honestly consider the idea. Dale is absolutely against the idea, but turns from the voice of reason to wanting Julia dead when he learns that Julia raped him while she cleaned his teeth once.

After a misstart with the search, the trio meets with Motherfucker Jones who charges them $5000 to consult on the murders of their respective bosses and the three begin surveillance designed to put them in position to kill one another's employers. In the process of surveillance, Dale accidentally saves Harken's life, Nick and Dale unwittingly do a lot of Bobby's blow and Kurt lets his hormones get the better of him with both Julia and Harken's wife. This leads to a revenge killing which completely upturns the three men's murder plot and puts them on a ridiculous run from the law with their lives in danger.

Horrible Bosses is most disappointing in that it is unsurprising. The random elements that could have been the most funny were all spoiled in the trailers, most notably Nick using drag racing in his Prius as an excuse for being caught doing ridiculously excessive speeds in a 25 mph zone. The rest of the humor on Horrible Bosses comes from the situation setup by the concept. These men work for employers who make their lives hell. There is humor in that, from the way Harken manipulates Nick - forcing him to stay late and miss the death of his grandmother to saving the job of the security technician by "confessing" to a "lie" about how late he was to work in the morning - to the sexual harassment by Julia. The search for a killer to hire is amusing, mostly when the trio considers going to Applebees to find their killer and instead decides on the neighborhood with the most car jackings. But even that moment quickly passes and the film plods along in remarkably predictable fashion, with random jokes like the Indian voice over the On-Star-esque navigation system revealing his name is not truly Gregory and the guys stumbling over the proper pronunciation.

What I did like about the movie was that Horrible Bosses has a good setup and while it might have moments that seem objectionable, it addresses them within the film. Most notably, when searching for a murderer, the guys go to a bar that is very urban. No, it's not "urban," it's black. Black people everywhere and the whites who are there look like they want to be gangbangers. That raised my ire for the stereotype and the jokes wherein Jason Sudeikis' Kurt tries to talk and move like the people in the bar fell pretty flat. Jamie Foxx is a good sport as Motherfucker Jones, but what redeemed the whole inner city portion of the movie was the third meeting with Jones where he addresses just how ridiculous the premise Kurt was working on was.

Horrible Bosses also does have a pretty amazing cast. On the movie posters before the film was released, I noticed Donald Sutherland was in the cast and I could not fathom how he was not mentioned in every preview. His role is little more than a cameo as Jack. The acting, though, was nothing particularly special. While it might seem a real coup to get Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, Julie Bowen, Collin Farrell, Jason Sudeikis and Jason Bateman into one movie, with them all there, the movie never quite lands because they are all working well within their comfortable ranges.

Nowhere is this more clear than with Charlie Day. Charlie Day starts off with impressing by playing Dale as reasonable and arguably the smartest of the group. But it isn't long before he slips into his usual high-pitched whines and his manic physical comedy. What is even more disappointing is that he virtually repeats a riff from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia when Dale plays the Law And Order obsessed legal card. He did exactly the same thing in his television show and it was groanworthy to see it repeated here.

But again, Horrible Bosses is not bad. But it's not really extraordinary in any way and while it was amusing enough to laugh at, it doesn't quite pop to even inspire one to watch it again or think about it once they are done watching it.

For other works with Jason Bateman, please check out my reviews of:
The Change-Up
The Switch
Couples Retreat
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Arrested Development

4.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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"Mistletoe!" I Beg To Be Let Out Of Four Christmases!

The Good: Opens well, surprisingly
The Bad: Guts all character, Previews ruined virtually all of the humor, Not extraordinary acting.
The Basics: What could have been an average Christmas comedy is brought down by a smart beginning that develops into a predictable, formulaic comedy that makes no real sense.


Christmas movies tend to fare poorly with me because I have a low tolerance for schmaltz. Indeed, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (click here for that review!) and How The Grinch Stole Christmas (click here for that review!) remain some of the movies I have been especially critical of. In fact, the only movie centered around Christmas that comes to mind that I love is Love, Actually (click here for that film's review!) and that, arguably, is not for the Christmas elements of the film. So, seeing an insufferable number of previews for Four Christmases did not help its chances of getting a favorable review from me.

So, if anything, I went into Four Christmases knowing I was a bit biased against the movie, but I took my brother because I knew it was his kind of movie. The thing is, Four Christmases begins with enough humor, character, and fun that I found myself smiling. I found myself actually thinking - literally, the words! - "This might be like Sex Drive, I might be pleasantly surprised!" Instantly, the characters were engaging - they had character! - the humor was general and worked and I was having fun. Then came the first joke that had been in one of the many trailers, right around the same time as the first noticeably bad editing cut and the movie took a sharp right turn to Disappointmentville (you know its Christmastime when it's the train to "Disappointmentville" as opposed to . . . )

After a particularly invigorating role playing exercise out at a bar where Brad and Kate pretend to have anonymous sex with a stranger (when, in fact, they've been dating for three years and this is one of their many activities together), the couple prepares to avoid their families for Christmas by vacationing together in a spa in Fiji. Unfortunately for them, all flights out of San Francisco are postponed for the day because of fog. Kate gets caught by her mother, who sees the pair on the news and Brad and Kate are suddenly stuck cramming four Christmas celebrations into one day.

The pair visits Brad's blue-collar father, Kate's born again mother, Brad's new age mother and finally, Kate's nonentity father, all the while interacting with family members and children who torment them and challenge their ideas of what being parents might be like. After firmly rejecting marriage and parenthood for so long, Kate begins to think that she might want to settle down with Brad and this leads to tension between them.

"It's that kind of movie." Let's just start there. It's that kind of movie; it's a Christmastime romantic comedy where the point, of course, is to reinforce the importance of family and help the selfish happy couple realize that their lack of conformity to social mores is ultimately unacceptable and they can only derive real joy from falling into the same rut as most Americans. We get that going into the movie, but Four Christmases did two things to try to make itself appear like it wasn't going to be like that. First, all of the press. If you've been to a Regal Cinema for the past month (or two), you've seen previews for Four Christmases and in their "First Look" screensaver show before the movie, this is one of the movies that Regal (especially) has been plugging with interviews about the movie. In one of those, actress Reese Witherspoon makes a point of saying that what makes Four Christmases different from other movies of the type is that while Kate and Brag experience all sorts of humiliations at the hands of their respective families, it brings them together and they bond over the course of the day, as opposed to being torn apart by that.

Ms. Witherspoon: I hate it when celebrities lie to me! Far from being as reassuring and different as the star claims, the day is not about Kate and Brad comforting one another and sticking with one another through the hells that are their families. Kate abandons Brad to be beaten up by his brothers and nephews, never using their safe escape word ("Mistletoe!") to help him, instead expecting he might be able to do that while having the crap kicked out of him by his family, as she watches. Similarly, Brad leaves Kate to her own devices while she is trapped in the "jump jump" with children who are attacking her and then again on stage at an evangelical nativity play. Far from it, Four Christmases is about the Christmas Brad and Kate almost didn't make it.

The second thing that made me believe that this might be a different movie and actually surprise me was the vehemence of the arguments Brad and Kate have at the outset of the movie against having children or getting married. They were convincing, they were funny, it worked! I sat in my seat and I believed the lies . . . until the first bad cut.

The problem with Four Christmases is that it starts out with character and a decent message/theme and then it utterly abandons it in the most nonsensical way possible. After three very funny scenes wherein the viewer is treated to just how much in love Kate and Brad are and how adamant they are that marriage will ruin what they have, the movie launches into the whole idea of spending the four Christmas celebrations with their various families. Like Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back where Kevin Smith talks about how he had a vision of what the movie was when he wrote and directed the movie, only to be told by the studios that no, he had written a road movie, so get the characters on the road as quickly as possible, director Seth Allen is suddenly directing a Christmas movie, so get them to the Christmas celebrations as quickly as possible. This is done by Kate taking ONE phone call and suddenly, they are locked into FOUR visits. I sat in my seat and said, "What?! He didn't even answer HIS phone, how did they get committed to anything but one?!"

But let's boil it down to its simplest elements because I'm beginning to actually dislike the movie more, the more I write about it: I can deal with it being "that kind of movie," but it still has to make sense. Kate and Brad do EVERYTHING together and have a loving, healthy relationship where they love and respect one another and WANT to be together and stay happy and loving, so they have decided to not have children. They loathe children and in the process of their day, they meet with family who humiliates and abuses them, they see children who commit acts of violence against them, act like brats, and spit up on them and this makes them decide they WANT to have kids! Now, admittedly, I have a little bias here: I'm happily childfree (yes, there are those of us in the world). I was thrilled because for a moment Four Christmases looked like it might advocate a positive, childfree position. But no, all it takes is Kate seeing Brad holding one baby before her reserve cracks.

So, here we have two very intelligent, well-employed people who have love and have made a conscious decision based on logic, reason AND emotions and all it takes for them to change their minds is abandoning one another to the wolves that are each other's families and the reinforcement of all of their worst fears about having children (and, to a lesser extent, marriage). Call me crazy, but whenever I witness my worst-case scenario for something I decided against in another person or couple, it doesn't make me think "wow, I should try that," I think, "Wow, I sure dodged a bullet!" So, even if it's "that kind of movie," it still has to be good at being "that kind of movie" and Four Christmases is not.

And yes, it is appropriate to rail against it being "that kind of movie" even at the holidays. Your single or childless friends don't need yet another Hollywood film coming along and trying to convince them that they are selfish or miserable for not having or wanting children (we tend to have parents for that). Here are two DINKs who are able to have fun, provide their loved ones with fabulous things and treat one another beautifully: why should they suddenly want children, especially when they see how rotten other people's kids have turned out and know about their own boatloads of issues?

The marriage issue is dealt with somewhat better than the child issue, though there's an irritating tendency in Four Christmases to push the two hand-in-hand. At no point do either of the protagonists say "Okay, maybe children, but we were right about not getting married." Instead, the idea of marriage working for the couple comes out in a particularly witless scene where Brad's brother Denver and his wife mop the floor with everyone in a game that proves how well they know one another. The reason this scene doesn't work like it could in virtually every other movie is that Kate and Brad do everything together and love doing things with one another. You don't have that level of interaction with someone without picking up on what they like, dislike, etc.

In other words, Four Christmases sacrifices any sense of character for a dumb, obvious comedy that is just plain troubling. Indeed, much of the movie is violent physical comedy that will largely appeal to the under 13 crowd or slapstick and gross-out humor like babies spitting up on people. All of this is in the trailer and rather than go on my usual rant against preview trailers that show all of the movie - this one did - I'm going in a different direction. Mr. Gordon: watch the preview trailer for your movie Four Christmases. If that doesn't make you want to fire your editor, I don't know what would. The editing for the trailer has an actual sense of comedic timing, lines like Witherspoon talking to her mom about Brad giving her a hug are actually funny (at least the first time) in the trailer. In the movie, it is cut together with such speed that there is no joke there. As well, there are elements in the trailers that did not make the final cut, so this is bound to be loaded with deleted scenes for the DVD. One suspects, again that there is some pressure here to get the Christmas visits started because some of that humor might have slowed down the film. But with only 82 minutes to the movie to begin with, it's tough to wonder why they weren't included at least to get it up to the requisite 90 minutes most films are held to (matinees only, people!).

The soundtrack in Four Christmases is annoyingly overt through most of the film as well, with background music being up-tempo Christmas remixes, as if to remind the viewer before the visits begin that they are watching a Christmas movie. The whole editing problem persists throughout the movie and if comedy is based upon surprise, virtually all of the best moments once the Christmas visits begin are ruined by the trailers. Actually, the only real laughs to be had outside what was in the trailers is all dialogue-based - ahh, geriatric sex jokes! - and the overall feeling of the movie is that this is a sloppy movie. Yes, those of us who watch even "that kind of movie" for details will be shocked at how poorly put together this movie is. For example, after being vomited on by a baby, Kate is forced to wear clothes her sister has for her at her mother's house despite the fact that her luggage would have been in the car they came in (all of the gifts were mailed beforehand and if the couple was that eager to get the day over with, they would have gone right from the airport . . .)

The pacing is also terribly off in Four Christmases, with the first two families taking a disproportionately long time. Family visit number three is essentially a setup for a single joke (it's in the trailers) and the final one isn't funny at all, merely the chance for everyone to come around to their obvious and predestined revelations.

As for the acting . . . Jon Voight might as well have walked off the set of Pride And Glory and onto the set of Four Christmases for all of the differences in how he plays the two parts I've seen him in the last month. Kristin Chenowith plays yet another perky, ditzy woman and Jon Favreau is yet another Neanderthal type man. It turns out that this is actually the first movie starring Vince Vaughn I've sat through but he plays the role of Brad exactly as I would have expected given the few supporting roles I've seen him in or in previews for other dumb comedies in which he starred.

As for Reese Witherspoon . . . Merry Christmas: I'm not going to go into how poorly she was boxed into an obvious role and relegated to passing off her smile and a look of cautious intrigue as comedy. Please, just don't lie to me again.

Four Christmases is exactly the movie is appears to be from the trailers, only the process of getting there is nowhere near as funny, clever or sensible as it could have been. And no one needs their intelligence or values insulted for Christmas.

For other Christmas movies, please check out my reviews of:
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Batman Returns
The Nightmare Before Christmas

3.5/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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