Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are professionals in San Francisco who have spent three happy years together without ever meeting each other’s (divorced) parents.
But their bliss runs out this Christmas, when all four parents command their presence, and the couple wind up having to visit all the parents they’ve been avoiding for years — on a single Christmas morning.
The couple’s cell phones start jangling the moment a TV crew shows up at the fogged-in airport where their getaway flight’s been grounded, and before you can say “plot contrivance,” they’re off to see Brad’s dyspeptic bumpkin of a dad (Robert Duvall) and two Neanderthal brothers Kate didn’t know Brad had.
Slapstick ensues — from the tragic installation of a rooftop satellite dish to random acts of stupidity including wrestling tackles in the living room and an infant’s projectile vomiting. This convinces Kate she should really become a mother, naturally.
The first visit is followed by a trip to see Brad’s cradle-robbing mom (Sissy Spacek), who’s shacked up with her son’s best friend. After a bit of strangely fierce board-game playing, the couple zips off to see Kate’s stiff-upper-crust mother (Mary Steenburgen), who drags them to church where they get roped into portraying Mary and Joseph in a Christmas pageant.
Finally they head for the home of Kate’s laid-back but earnest dad (Jon Voigt) for… well, for a rest, apparently, as the four screenwriters have by this time reached the bottom of their bag of tricks and are reduced to repeating that uproarious puking-infant gag a second time.
4 Christmases, directed by Seth Gordon (The King of Kong) is marginally better than most infantile holiday comedies, with a few offbeat comic ideas, a reliably droll performance from Vaughn. Credit must be given to the four estranged parents played by watchable old troopers like Duvall, Spacek, Voight and Steenburgen.
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