Four Christmases (2008)

It won't win any Oscars, but it had its moments. I had seen the trailer at least a dozen times so thought this would be a pleasant way to spend Thanksgiving afternoon with Amy before dinner with the family. We had a few laughs and did some cringing. A happily unmarried couple's (Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon) usual plan to ditch their families for an exotic beach vacation is scuttled and they have to spend Christmas day shuttling between the homes of his father, her mother, his mother, and her father, in the greater San Francisco Bay area. Noteworthy that one of the 13 producers was Peter Billingsley (best known as the lead kid in A Christmas Story (1983)--really? that recently?), who had a cameo as the patient Fiji Airlines agent. Also noteworthy that each of the 4 parents was played by an Oscar winner: Robert Duvall for Tender Mercies (1983), Mary Steenburgen for Melvin and Howard (1980), Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), and Jon Voight for Coming Home (1978). If you have seen the trailer you will know that Vince Vaughn's sidekick from Swingers (1996), Jon Favreau, played the muscled, mohawked, violent brother. You might not know that the other brother with few lines was played by country music star Tim McGraw. Another country music star, Dwight Yoakum, also seen in, among others, Sling Blade (1996) with Billy Bob Thornton, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) with Tommy Lee Jones, and Wedding Crashers (2005) with Vaughn, played Pastor Phil.