There’s a good movie hiding in here somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. There are a lot of good ideas and good moments, but as a whole I thought this was terrible.

The conceit is great, a couple who has always avoided spending Christmas with the family is suddenly forced to spend the holiday with both sides of the family. They are both children of divorce, and so have to spend the day with four different families. Great setup. Four disparate families. Opportunities for hijinks galore. Opportunities for heartwarming lessons about the importance of family. The problem is I hated the hijinks, and I thought the lessons learned were not heartwarming, they were muddled and dumb.

Okay, a few more details, Brad and Kate, played by Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, are two selfish people who every year lie to their families about doing charity work during Christmas in order get out of spending time with the families. They are presented as a couple who have it all figured out. They’re smarter than all the rest. They’re smug and arrogant in their relationship. Not a great start. Our main characters are already insufferable.

Their trip to Fiji is thwarted by fog, and only go on the family tour when they accidentally end up on the local news that apparently all four of their families watches.

The movie is full of big “comedy” moments. None of them work for me. I’m going to breakdown three of them and try to explain why this movie rubbed me the wrong way.

They go to Brad’s dad’s house. His dad is played by Robert Duvall, and his brothers are MMA fighters. Brad gets the crap beaten out of him. His brothers assault him with wrestling moves that should cripple Brad. I mean it is rough bone crunching violence that they enact on Brad. The idea is that Brad is a soft modern man and his brothers are brutal neanderthals. The violence is just violence. These guys beat up Vince Vaughns stunt double while Vince Vaughn screams for ten minutes. There aren’t funny punchlines peppered in the fight. The fight isn’t cleaverly staged or executed. The fight itself isn’t funny. It just looks painful. Is there a comedic payoff where Brad unleashes years of pent up anger and overpowers his brothers physically gaining their respect? No. Does Brad use is soft man status and out talk his brothers thereby earning their respect? No. Is there a comedic or dramatic point to these scenes? No. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be laughing at here.

Later in the film, Kate has taken a pregnancy test as her mother’s house. Her neice Kasi walks into the bathroom while Kate is on the toilet and steals the test. Kate chases after her. Kasi hides in the bouncy castle in the backyard that is full of neighborhood kids. Kate must overcome her childhood fear of bouncy castles to retrieve the test. This is a good setup. It’s a moment of potential character growth. An adult in a bouncy castle has comedic potential. There are a lot of bits you can do. What bits do they do? Kate goes in, gets beaten up by some children. She falls out of the castle. She gets her anger on, and goes back in and beats up the children. She gets her test back and leaves.

This is potentially very funny. An adult going ful Incredible Hulk on some snotty kids in a buncy castle is a good setup. But again, it is presented as just violence. Not comedic violence, just beating up kids. They don’t even use the bouncy house to their advantage. She could bounce kids off the floor of the walls. She could do a lot of very clever things. Instead she knocks a few kids around and thell Kasi that she peed on the test. Kasi immediately relinquishes the test and Kate walks away. Why didn’t she do that from the beginning? It could have saved us ten minutes of garbage.

The next big moment is when Kate and Brad are volunteered to play Joseph and Mary in a mega church nativity play. Kate is crippled with stage fright. Brad eats up the spotlight. There’s potential here for some very funny stuff, and it’s not bad in itself. The trouble is what it reveals about Brad and Kate. Brad doesn’t support Kate. He doesn’t pay attention to her or her needs. He is so selfish that she doesn’t even register to him, and that’s been happening the entire movie. Brad doesn’t listen to Kate throughout the movie. Kate doesn’t support Brad either. When he’s getting beaten up by his brothers, she doesn’t step in to help or stand up for her boyfriend. She asks if he’s okay at one point, but that’s it. She tells him to stand up for himself, but that’s the extent of her support for him. It was during the nativity scene that I realized that I don’t like these two together. They shouldn’t be dating. They’re bad together. They don’t know each other. They don’t support each other. They tell each other to get back out there and just get it over with, but they are a terrible couple.

I don’t want these two to be togethere. I was hoping they would break up. When they finally do at the end of the second act, I was very happy. I thought “good, they should be apart and spend the holidays with their families. But then they reconcile which they always do in these movies with a big speech at the end. But this big speech is just Vince Vaughn saying “okay, lets have kids.” And that solves everything. It’s a lame reconciliation that doesn’t serve the characters or resolve their core issues. Their core issues is that they don’t communicate, they dont support each other, and they don’t know each other. The resolution to the film doesn’t address any of these issues. It’s a false conclusion for the film to draw.

I didn’t like this movie. If you did I’m glad. If it’s your Christmas favorite, I’m glad you found something to like. I didn’t, and I hope I was clear why it didn’t work for me.

It’s not my cup of tea. D