In Twenty 20-Fav, we’re spending 2025 examining the work of actor/director Jon Favreau. This week Vince Vaughn is back in the driver’s seat with another rom-com proving that Hell is absolutely other people.
Four Christmases is another production from Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show label, and like The Break-Up before it, this one finds Vaughn and his buddies navigating a typical rom-com setup the only way they know how: Like a bull in a china shop. I covered this one six years ago on my Christmas movie podcast, and back then I found it shrill and irritating, more interested in inflicting indignities upon its stars than spreading any amount of Christmas cheer. Watching it again, I honestly can’t say my opinion of it has improved. Four Christmases is just a deeply unpleasant experience.
The movie stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as Brad and Kate, a couple who are both children of divorce and as such, they’ve decided that getting married and having kids really isn’t for them. They’re committed to breaking that particular cycle of abuse, which is honestly a commendable stance, but it doesn’t extend to actually dealing with their families or communicating this to anyone without sounding like a pair of crazy people. Instead of visiting their families for Christmas, the pair book a holiday getaway to Fiji, lying to their families that they’re vaccinating sick children in Burma. Literally any other excuse would have seemed more plausible, but “sick kids in Burma” is the one they went with. (There’s a reason for this, apparently, but we’ll get there in a moment.)
Anyway, their flight to Fiji is cancelled due to intense fog. Which, sure, that happens. But then a local news crew arrives on the scene to get reactions from people at the airport, and wouldn’t ya know it? Brad and Kate have to cop to the whole charade on live TV! Their cover blown, they must now face the reality of visiting each of their four parents and enduring the embarrassments that inevitably ensue.
The sitcom premise established with the quickness1, we eventually settle into the groove of the film, which features four extremely sitcom setups at each divorced parent’s house. We first visit Brad’s father (Deep Impact’s Robert Duvall) and brothers, amateur MMA fighters Denver (Jon Favreau) and Dallas (country singer Tim McGraw for some reason). Brad accidentally tells Denver’s son (a very young Skyler Gisondo) the truth about Santa Claus, Kate finds out Brad’s real name is Orlando, and then Brad falls off his dad’s roof trying to install a satellite dish, practically destroying the living room. And it’s all Brad’s fault because nobody asked him to do it. Ha ha ha!
Next we visit Kate’s mom (Elf‘s Mary Steenburgen) and sister (Kristin Chenoweth), where we discover mom has remarried a church pastor (Dwight Yoakam, last seen in Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show) who insists on making Brad and Kate play Mary and Joseph in his church’s Nativity play. Kate clams up over this because she’s starting to think she does want kids and doesn’t know how to talk to Brad about it. Brad, not understanding this, sees Kate’s hesitation and decides to start vamping on stage, with all the ‘praise the Lord’s and ‘hallelujah’s a loudmouth idiot can muster.
And just to round out the cast and plot points, the third vignette finds Brad and Kate visiting his mom (Sissy Spacek), who’s remarried to Brad’s childhood best friend (Swingers’ Patrick Van Horn). Finally, with the entire evening driving a wedge between Brad and Kate about where their relationship might be heading, Kate goes to visit her dad (Jon Voight). He turns out to be the only sensible adult in the film, gracious enough to invite his ex-wife, her new beau and their kids over for Christmas dinner. There’s a lesson in humility and accepting your own failures here.
It’s also where we get our happy ending, as Brad and Kate do a little soul searching and realize that none of this bullshit matters and of course they’re perfect for each other. (But they already knew that, and also knew that all this bullshit was going to happen, so you’d think they’d be a little nicer to each other, but what do I know?)
You kinda see the wheels in motion here: Kate learns about Brad’s childhood trauma while they meet with his dad, so then of course Brad gets to learn all about Kate’s upbringing and all the awful things she had to overcome as a kid. Then we see how his mother moved on from his dad’s bullshit, and vice versa with her parents. Along the way they’re learning about what makes each other tick, as any good couple should. But instead, these two idiots are more upset about the things they’re only just now learning about each other, when they should see it as a bonding experience.
“How dare you keep your childhood fat camp photos a secret? This obviously changes how I look at you, Reese Witherspoon!”
“How dare you change your name from something stupid to something more normal? How can I trust anything you ever say, Vince Vaughn?”
It’s ridiculous and any sane human being would roll their eyes right out of their skull to have to answer for things like this. This is exactly why I’ve never been a fan of movies like Four Christmases. Instead of just talking to each other and listening like rational adults in a stable relationship, it’s more important for our characters to act like petulant children and throw a hissy fit because their partner had the nerve to be ashamed of themselves. There’s a kernel of a truth buried deep in there, but it’s surrounded by so much inane bullshit that it’s hardly worth digging for.
It also doesn’t help that this movie finds Vince Vaughn in a state of constant motion. Even more than in Swingers or Made or anything else we’ve seen thus far, Vaughn simply never shuts the hell up. At first I thought it had to be some kind of character tic, like Brad is so terrified of any kind of silence that he has to constantly fill the air with his douchebag word vomit. While there’s probably some truth to that, I think there’s a more logical culprit.
Four Christmases, while credited to four separate screenwriters, went into production during the 2007 Writer’s Guild strike. This meant that legally, the film was prohibited from any on-the-fly rewrites, leaving the cast to improvise in order to fill any gaps. Naturally, Vince Vaughn stepped in to take care of that business, so we get several scenes (like the Nativity play scene) where Vaughn starts talking and doesn’t stop until his co-stars finally give him the ‘yes, and…’ that he needs to finish the scene. Brad and Kate’s whole “we’re going to Burma to help sick kids” lie feels like something Vaughn blurted out in the middle of a take and they just rolled with it. Yes, this happens more than once. Yes, it is exhausting.
It’s also worth noting that this movie comes from director Seth Gordon, who was handpicked by Vince Vaughn on the strength of his documentary The King of Kong2, about the battle over the high score in the game Donkey Kong. That story’s hero, mild-mannered science teacher Steve Wiebe, gets a small part in this playing husband to Kristin Chenoweth. He’s introduced playing Nintendo, naturally, and spends half his screen time asleep. Only mentioning all of this because I know for a fact Vaughn’s fascination with video games will return to this column very soon.
Four Christmases is the worst kind of romantic comedy. Contrived to the point of inanity, obnoxious and gross for all the wrong reasons, not even the slightest bit romantic, and not at all funny. And to top it all off, I honestly forgot it was a Christmas movie for 90% of the runtime. I can’t even say it’s the worst rom-com of the decade, because there’s another, worse one on the horizon. But I can say pretty definitively that I never need to see this one again.
THE FAVREAU DIMENSION
Jon Favreau plays Brad’s older brother Denver, an amateur MMA fighter who relishes the opportunity to wrap his brother in a headlock and make him beg for mercy. (It’s the best scene, frankly.) Favs is absolutely ripped in this movie, thanks in no small part to Iron Man. When he got the call to direct Iron Man, he celebrated by getting his ass into shape, reportedly shedding 70 pounds. Good for him, as one of my favorite running gags in this series is seeing all the times Favs gets to beat up on Vince Vaughn.
FINAL RATING
1.5 stars (out of 5). So bad.
NEXT TIME: One for the bros, I guess.
- Four Christmases is only 88 minutes long, this thing moves like lightning.
↩︎ - Which we’ve also covered on Christmas Creeps. It’s not a Christmas movie, but it’s my podcast so I can do what I want. ↩︎
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