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FOUR CHRISTMASES

Directed by Seth Gordon

Written by Matt Allen,

Caleb Wilson, Jon Lucas,

and Scott Moore

Starring Vince Vaughn

and Reese Witherspoon

Classification: PG

They don't want marriage, they don't want children and they certainly don't want to waste the holiday season with their dysfunctional kin. Sharing these merry values, Brad and Kate are a blissfully happy couple - until this Yuletide, when their annual escape gets foiled and family rears its ugly head.

So begins Four Christmases, a wannabe comedy whose premise is a simple case of basic studio arithmetic: If celebrating one Christmas can be an amusing travail, then a quartet of them is bound to be hell-bent on hilarity. Of course, as everyone except directors, screenwriters, actors and producers surely knows, the only funny thing about Hollywood math is that it never adds up.

But back to our once-happy twosome (Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon), obliged to pay duty visits to their respective parents ensconced in their respective divorces - his dad's home, then her mom's, his mom's, her dad's, pretty much in that order. Okay, let's grant the picture its right to hyperbole and admit there's truth in this conceit.

In an age of divided and scattered clans, we've all been there/done that over Christmas Day - too many turkey dinners eaten in too many overheated houses with too many strange relatives and relative strangers. Some of us, travelling back to the old homestead, may even have opened a wreathed door to be greeted by a hitherto unknown middle-aged woman boasting immodest cleavage, flashing an eager smile, and chirping: "Hi, I'm your Dad's new girlfriend."

And don't forget the post-meal board games played in panelled rec rooms against opponents who find nothing trivial about Trivial Pursuit. Or those moments when good cheer morphs into drunken nostalgia and the photo album gets dragged out, the one that prominently features intimate shots of a fat eight-year-old who used to be you. Oh, there's definitely wicked humour to be mined here. And occasionally, mainly when Vaughn is let off his leash to improvise in spat-out asides, the movie even finds some.

But then it's back to that script and its damnable math, where more is always less. Like more big names: Scan the parental roster and you'll find the likes of Robert Duvall, Mary Steenburgen, Sissy Spacek and Jon Voight - good actors all and all thoroughly wasted.

That's because more names lead only to more mania, as the serial domestic visits become set-piece excuses to ramp up the physical shtick and the attendant general hysteria. So it's not enough to saddle Brad the lawyer with a less sophisticated brother - nope, Brad must get wrestled to the floor and beaten to a pulp by an imbecilic sibling with a chest full of tattoos and an accessorizing Mohawk. Nor can Kate simply get dragged off reluctantly to midnight mass - nope, Kate must be goaded into playing Mary in the church pageant and wear a really embarrassing costume and suffer stage fright like a biblical plague and, meanwhile over at Dad's house, Brad isn't just falling off a roof but he's also clutching at an electrical cord that leads to a TV set that prompts an explosion that sets the curtains ablaze and ... stop it, please.

Understandably, all this havoc wreaks havoc on the perfect bliss of the perfect couple - not that we really notice, since, as hot screen pairings go, Vince and Reese weren't exactly a chemistry set to begin with. Nevertheless, this being a Christmas comedy of sorts, it demands a happy ending of sorts. And a moral too. Don't mean to spill the cranberries, but maybe the couple who despised marriage and hated children and loathed their divorced parents could get married and have children and, no doubt one fine day, become divorced parents themselves. And then, in festive seasons to come, wouldn't the hilarious tidings multiply exponentially - hey, just do the math.