BEFORE: I'm starting my holiday programming today, I'll hit four films this week and then skip a week and hit the last four. Normally I'd end the year with a Christmas film, maybe two if I'm lucky, but I'm going to cross SEVEN off the list this year, with a little help from just one non-holiday film.
With a big cast like today's film, there were certainly a lot of linking opportunities - which is great because I always need a good way to get from regular movies TO Christmas films, and now that I'm here, I can knock off a whole bunch of them.
John Goodman carries over from "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain", and this would have been an opportunity to get rid of the new "Smurfs" movie, but I needed the slot to fit in another Christmas movie at the end, so I've tabled the Smurfs, it looks like that film could help with some Christmas linking next year, so it's postponed for 12 months, thank God.
THE PLOT: The intertwined stories of four generations of Coopers unfold right before the annual family reunion on Christmas Eve. Can they survive the most wonderful time of the year?
AFTER: This is the rather complicated story of a complicated family - I couldn't figure out who was related to who, overall - so I have to go through the Wiki page now and try to straighten it all out. But everyone is completely dysfunctional at all times, which seems a bit odd for a holiday film, where we're used to everything going so well, at least in the movies. Obviously somebody attempted to update the traditional Christmas film formula by trying to represent the more modern sensibilities of divorce, blended families, weird first dates and even gay relationships, though that last one felt really tacked on, almost as an afterthought.
Just because everyone has problems with relationships and family at some point in their lives, that does not mean that everyone has problems with relationships and family at EVERY point in their lives, and this film really comes at you from that point of view, that families today are very complicated and confusing, I mean, sure, they can be but they don't all HAVE to be. I feel the need now to draw out the whole Cooper family tree as a chart just to figure this all out...
As near as I can tell, the central couple is Charlotte and Sam Cooper, played by Diane Keaton and John Goodman, they're married but finally ready to talk about getting a divorce because now their kids are adults and out of the house. That in itself is a terrible reason to separate, but there are other issues, like some trip to Africa that they were planning for many years but never took, and now it's too late or something. No, that's not positive thinking, now is the perfect time if their kids are grown and out of the house - go to Africa, re-connect with each other, what the hell else do you have to do?
Charlotte's father is still alive, Bucky Newport, played by Alan Arkin and Charlotte has a sister, Emma, played by Marisa Tomei. Emma gets busted for shoplifting, which makes little sense because she doesn't seem poor, so she's just broken somehow? Everyone here seems a little broken in some way. Anyway she talks herself out of the shoplifting charge by talking to the police officer who arrests her and listening to his back-story, and that's where the token gay stuff comes in. (2015, yeah that seems about right.).
Meanwhile on Sam's side he's got his Aunt Fishy, who I think lives in a nursing home but is at Sam's house all the time, she's played by June Squibb and with her dementia and knack for saying outrageous things she might be the best character in the movie.
Charlotte and Sam have two adult kids, Hank and Eleanor (Ed Helms and Olivia Wilde). Hank is divorced from Angie and has joint custody of their three kids, Charlie, Bo and Madison. All three kids also have problems, but Charlie the oldest (Timothee Chalamet) is a teenager who's striking out with girls but keeps trying to kiss Lauren Hesselberg, and finally, awkwardly succeeds at Christmastime.
OK, I think I've got all the family relationships figured out, but I wish that doing that added up to something more, really this film is just a chance to jump between six different stories as the family members get into various predicaments on Christmas Eve and then come together that night for the family dinner and sing-along. I guess it's nice to see all the stories combine at the end, but it still felt very fragmented, like it didn't add up to more than the sum of its parts.
What was up with Alan Arkin's character, Bucky, was he attracted to Ruby, the waitress in the diner? He's quite a few years older than her, what the heck was he thinking? Look, I'm as liberal as the next guy but there had to be a fifty year difference between them, to have some kind of attraction there is quite unusual - I mean, whatever but also ewwww... And then after he gets sick she starts dancing with Hank, who's divorced and also Bucky's grandson? Would you date a woman who was attracted to, or even had a connection with your grandfather? Was Bucky acting as a wingman for his own grand-son? It's very odd no matter how I look at it.
Eleanor picking up a soldier on leave in the airport was just as weird, she wanted him to come to her family's Christmas Eve dinner with her, and pretend they were dating, all because she's really dating a married doctor in her hometown and she can't bring the married doctor to the party? Oh, great, so if you're already lying to your parents, why not just tell a bigger lie, that should fix everything.
The voice of Steve Martin as the narrator was also quite confusing, it took me a while to realize that it was meant to be the voice of the family DOG narrating their story. This is a very cozy and nice mess, but that's still technically a mess. Every character has flashbacks to other Christmases from when they were younger, which I suppose is meant to be adorable and nostalgic but honestly just makes everything even more confusing, sorry.
Directed by Jessie Nelson (producer of "Because I Said So" and "Danny Collins")
Also starring Diane Keaton (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Ed Helms (last seen in "Coffee & Kareeem"), Alex Borstein (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Timothee Chalamet (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Boogie Woogie"), Alan Arkin (last seen in "Sr."), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Brothers"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Babylon"), Jake Lacy (last seen in "Balls Out"), June Squibb (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "The Electric State"), Maxweill Simkins (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Blake Baumgartner (last seen in "Villains"), Dan Amboyer, Scott Garan, Dorothy Silver, Larry McKay, Molly Gordon (last seen in "You People"), Sylvia Kauders (last seen in "The Answer Man"), Krista Marie Yu (last seen in "Fun Size"), Lev Pakman, M.R. Wilson, Elisabeth Evans, Keenan Joliff (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Sean McGee, Rory Wilson, Quinn McColgan (last seen in "Non-Stop"), Kristin Slaysman (last seen in "Save the Date"), Jon Tenney (last seen in "The Seagull"), Ralph Browning (last seen in "One for the Money"), Cady Huffman (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Sophie Guest (last seen in "The Fault in Our Stars"), Scott Lockhart (ditto), Bettina Kenney, Farelisse Lassor, Lawrence Pusateri, Isaac Smith, Michelle Veintimilla (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Phillip Zack, and the voice of Steve Martin (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), with archive footage of Charlie Chaplin, Judy Holliday, Jimmy Stewart (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple").
RATING: 4 out of 10 poinsettias for sale
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