Review: Holiday Turkey Arrives Early With ‘Four Christmases’

Every once in a while screenwriters will create a story that puts the cart before the horse. Such is the case with the most recent holiday offering “Four Christmases.”

As blatant as the red on Rudolph’s nose, you can almost see screenwriters Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson downing a couple of egg nogs while thinking up funny scenarios in which to place their characters, yet none of the situations ever reach the level of comic bliss.

Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon star as the most unlikely of happy couples. If you believe the story, the two are blissfully in love, although it’s vaguely established why the two are a match made in eharmony heaven.

The upscale San Francisco couple is getting ready to spend Christmas somewhere far from their dysfunctional families, all four of them due to that modern tradition known as divorce.

It’s a journey the pair has shared in their three years of dating. This year it’s Fiji where Brad and Kate will sip umbrella-decorated drinks while leading all four families to believe they are in Burma doing charity work.

The pair packs their tourist garb, complete with Hawaiian shirt and overly large sunglasses and head to the airport. But as movie fate would have it, their flight is grounded and all flights canceled. Of course, no sooner are the flights canceled that a local news crew shows up to interview the hapless pair.

At least one of the parents is tuned in to the newscast, but all four in short order are on the phone insisting they visit for the holidays.

The situations at the family homes allow for plenty of pratfalls, embarrassing moments, and even a scene where a home pregnancy test stick becomes a game of hot potato for a group of five year olds.

This Christmas story, at 88 minutes, stretches the limits of how far a family can go before they aren’t just dysfunctional but certifiably crazy. Brad’s father, Howard, superbly played by Robert Duvall, heads up a house where siblings work together to perfect the art of cage fighting while one of the brothers’ pregnant wife creates a casserole out of Doritos. She’s barefoot and pregnant offering Kate a frightening look at motherhood and explaining in detail what happens to breasts that have been subjected to childfeeding for too long. Add that to the category of TMI (too much information) as is a detailed conversation about grandma and grandpa’s sex life at Kate’s mom’s house. There’s also frequent projectile baby vomiting with Vaughn in a perpetual state of red-faced nausea. And a product placement for the game Taboo only leaves moviegoers clueless at its inclusion, yet when the story tries to veer away from its over-the-top silliness and works at incorporating a message about family, love, and all the joys of holiday gatherings, you’ll hope for another bout of baby spit up.

Brad and Kate expect the worst from visiting their families and that’s what they get. If moviegoers keep their expectations on about the same par, “Four Christmases” won’t be any more disappointing than the yearly fruit cake from Aunt Mildred.

Review: Far Away ‘Australia’ Suffers Ups, Downs

A cast of thousands with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman at the center makes this almost three hour long movie an epic, for sure, yet “Australia” also feels like you’re being taken hostage for the evening.

“Australia” is a journey that visionary filmmaker Baz (“Moulin Rouge”) Luhrmann wanted to make, but would the expensive film be something that moviegoers would enjoy or merely endure?

That’s a matter of opinion. From the onset, the complicated story takes time to figure out. Set in Australia, naturally, an English aristocrat leaves all the comforts of home in London to find her husband who has gone off to a place called Faraway Downs.

She’s decided to take the trek to find out if he has been involved in a love affair at the cattle ranch he’s been forced to sell off due to financial reasons.

The beginning of the film is a mish mash of situations. Lady Sarah Ashley is picked up by a guide in a rickety truck, a drunkard man sits between her and the rough driver. A brawling bar scene is even more confusing and used as a backdrop for Lady Ashley’s underthings to become part of the antics. It’s circa 1939 funny.

The film takes place from 1939 to 1942 with lots of shots of desert terrain, plenty of CGI cattle herds, an involved story of greed, death, witchcraft, and some really great costumes.

Channeling Clint Eastwood in the early moments of the film, Hugh Jackman also shows shades of Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, and even Spencer Tracy. People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, plays the rugged Drover, a cowboy who says that “no man hires him and no man fires him.” He lives his life for the land and cattle.

Jackman gets plenty of screen time to look rancher handsome with a beard, tight cattleman’s costume, and, at one point, a sexy water scene in slow motion. We also get the clean shaven, doe-eyed version of Jackman in a tuxedo dressed like a prince for a ball.

Kidman opts for a terse lipped Katharine Hepburn as she sits upright in overloaded truck that carries her in an awkward bit of symbolism to self discovery. As her character evolves, she lets loose and that’s where the real talent of Kidman shines through. Despite some goofy moments, she keeps her wits.

Review: ‘Quantum of Solace’ Is Darkest Bond Film Yet

For all the detractors out there who didn’t believe Daniel Craig would make a good James Bond, if “Casino Royale” didn’t convince you, “Quantum of Solace” might.

Still, Craig is a different kind of Bond. The first blonde Bond, his jagged face is more rugged than the pretty boy Bonds (Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan), but it gives him all the more sex appeal. Too bad director Marc Forster decided for this Bond sex appeal was out and brooding was in.

The film picks up where “Royale” left off and this time Agent 007’s mission is personal. Betrayed by Vesper Lynd in the last film, he wants to uncover the truth and find out what really happened that led to her death.

If action’s what you want from a Bond movie, action is definitely what you’ll get with “Quantum Solace.” Almost void of Bond’s bedding of numerous femme fatale, his martini is only shaken, not stirred once around.

So audiences must get their kicks from adrenaline pumped up in the form of non-stop car and foot chases, shootouts, exotic locales, and mysterious enemies by the names of Mr. White and the evil Dominic Greene. Greene is the focal point of Bond’s rage as the crafty conniver tries to control Bolivia in an effort to control one of the world’s most important natural resources. So what does this all mean? Nothing really. It just sets the stage for an intercontinental trek across six different locales including the United Kingdom, Panama, Chile, Mexico, Italy and Austria.

An incredible car chase opens the 22^nd adventure as Bond eludes bad guys in an Aston Martin DBS vs. them in an Alfa Romero (we don’t know who they are, what they represent and does it really matter?). The Aston Martin became infamous after the scenes were filmed because it was the one that Craig’s stunt double was seriously injured in. You can see why during the incredible nail biters where the $233,000 car takes quite a beating, but that’s chump change to Bond and the British Secret Intelligence Service. Our hero escapes with only a few cuts and scrapes, and when it’s all over, you catch your breath and think, ‘how’d they do that?’ “

There won’t be much time to ruminate on that thought because soon after Bond is caught in another tight situation, this time as he fights with a man beginning in one of the rooms of a hotel then spilling out onto the balcony. It’s one of the most highly choreographed fight scenes seen on screen since the empty hand fighting in “The Bourne Ultimatum.”

Bond does just about every stunt imaginable including flying a DC-3 plane over a South American desert, stealing a motorcycle and driving it through narrow streets, running an exhaustive foot chase through a bell tower, and driving a rickety speed boat that is able to jump large vessels with amazing agility while dodging water bombs.

There there’s the new Bond girl in town. Doe-eyed Olga Kurylenko plays Camille who is seeking some revenge of her own. She’s more of a hands-on Bond girl than her predecessors; when it comes to fighting, she chooses her own battles and sees them to the end.

Russian-born Kurylenko, 28, may be new to U.S. audiences, but has a reputation for many steamy scenes in foreign films. In this outing, however, her Bond with bond is based on satisfying revenge. Frankly, the two barely click in the chemistry department.

It’s actually Dame Judi Dench and Craig that click in a way that adds depth to the film. As “M,” Bond’s boss, Dench utters one of the best lines in the movie. “If you could avoid killing every possible lead, it would be greatly appreciated,” she says with icy conviction.

She’s right. It’s almost unbearably un-Bondlike when he throws the body of a dear old friend in a dumpster, then lifts his wallet.

There’s a dark undertone to this film much like the turn that the “Dark Knight” took in the “Batman” franchise. This is a colder, more solemn Bond. There’s no room for a dripping wet Daniel Craig to emerge from the Caribbean Sea in a La Perla Grigioperla Lodato swimsuit. And darn it for that. We can see an action film any day, but what we love about Bond is his way with the ladies, and his way with a drink. Give us solace: Can we have our sexy Bond back?