Four Christmases (2008)

Until now, Brad and Kate had always managed to avoid spendingChristmas with their family by escaping to exotic lands toenjoy heavenly vacations. But this year, they failed. When they arrive at the airport, all the flights have been canceled. Even worse, a television news crew interviews them, revealing to their family where they are. This time, there's no way out and no excuses. Brad's father is waiting for them at his house. So is Kate's mother. And Brad's mother and Kate's father. Four family Christmases, the same day! Brad and Kate expect the worse... and they won't be disappointed. They will be spared of nothing. In between humiliations, the secrets each one of them had carefully kept from the other, the hard feelings and impossible situations, the couple will live through a day that might be the last their relationship can stand.


Reception

The film received negative reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports 25% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 139 reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a mixed/average score of 41 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.