The Gist:
Three friends and their assorted significant others have spent the Christmas holidays together for the past eight years. This year that means a self-centered woman who is indifferent to her girlfriend's desire to be a mother; a depressed man who is antagonistic to the fact that his new boyfriend is in love with him; and a sappy man whose wife is so newly pregnant, no one has been told yet. Over the course of the get together people act terrible to each other, testing love and friendship to the breaking point.
Mildly Spoiler-ish Comments:
There seems to be a train of thought that the holiday season isn't depressing enough on its own, so Christmas movies should be sad to lend a helping hand in making everyone even more miserable. Although in this case the Christmas setting is inconsequential. Any holiday or date of note that friends would use as an excuse to get together would have served, spring break, thanksgiving, a birthday, a graduation reunion, even Arbor Day would have been equally fine.
The issue of holiday aside, we have people leading sad lives, and facing issues that will quite likely end their friendships and relationships. Happy times.
On the positive side, the acting is more or less ok (with a couple dips into over-dramatic). A larger sized man is cast as the depressed self-destructive gay man, so if nothing else, he is not the standard actor you'd expect for a gay role.
Also, the story isn't uninteresting. It's just massively depressing. Additionally several of the characters are written to be incredibly unlikable, to the point that I didn't care about the terrible things they were going through. If anything, it quickly turned into "Oh that horrible person just had a bad thing happen to them? Good."
If movies where you actively want people to end up divorced and alone is your kinda movie, this was tailor made for you.
Women:
Yes
People of color:
One boyfriend
Gratuitous nudity:
Nope
- Director: Brian Samuel Davis
- Writer: Brian Samuel Davis
- Actors: Mattie Spradlin, Arthur Spradlin, Julie Tolman
- 92 min
- IMDB
