[rating=3.00]
From a certain, cynical perspective, it’s safe to call Love the Coopers one of the most accurate cinematic recreations of the Christmas experience of the last decade. There were moments that charmed me, and threatened to grow my three-sizes-too-small heart, and there were moments that caused my eyes to roll reflexively. At times I smiled in spite of myself, but mostly I was over it before it began and counted the minutes until I was allowed to go home. Never before has a film so captured the tediousness of Christmas in so effortless a manner, and the results are, in a way, as captivating as watching your uncle ruin another family dinner with his rants about “Obummer” without being near as memorable.
I suppose it’s the job of a Christmas movie to capitalize off the feelings of nostalgia we all carry for the holidays in an attempt to walk away with ten of your hard earned dollars. There’s an argument to be made that all movies are merely products that occasionally rise to level of art, but never is this view more apparent than at Christmas, when studios mass produce cookie cutter tales of holiday joy that families will flock to after Thanksgiving dinner has been eaten. New batches arise annually, but rare is the one that becomes a true classic.
In this regard, Love the Coopers pulls out all the stops, desperately vying for a position as your next holiday go to, alongside Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and Christmas Vacation. But its attempts are so brazen that it’s difficult not to recoil in secondhand embarrassment for the movie as it tries and tries again to paint a holiday picture that looks and feels like every other holiday picture that’s ever been painted. The family fights and makes up, they have hard times and they overcome, they’re filled with despair and find hope. It’s all very hum drum, and nothing is as special as the movie wants you to think it is.
As the title suggests, Love the Coopers follows the adventures of the Cooper family as they prepare for another year of holiday togetherness. Matriarch and patriarch Charlotte and Sam (Diane Keaton and John Goodman) are attempting one final Christmas as a family before announcing the end to their 40 year marriage—which, near as I can figure, is the result of a planned trip to Africa that got cancelled because of…reasons? (Yes, yes, it’s a metaphor for their failed communication and their growing apart over the years, I’m cynical not obtuse.) Charlotte’s sister Emma (Marissa Tomei) finds herself arrested for shoplifting on Christmas Eve and spends most of her screen time playing psychologist to her arresting officer (Anthony Mackie) in what might be the longest arrest in history. Their son Hank (Ed Helms) is trying desperately to hide the fact that he was fired from his job as a photographer at Sears from his family. Their daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) gets drunk in an airport bar instead of going home because her parents are just, like, so parental (or something?) and she meets Joe (Jake Lacy), an army man whose flight was cancelled, with whom she might fall in love despite the fact that he’s (gasp) Republican. Then there’s grandpa (Alan Arkin) who’s kind of in love with a waitress at his local diner (Amanda Seyfried) which, apparently, we aren’t supposed to find creepy.
Think of it as sort of an unfunny Christmas Vacation told in the style of Love, Actually. It couldn’t be filled with more false sweetness if they dumped a truck’s worth of saccharine on the ground and asked you to make snow angels. It’s the kind of movie that expects you to laugh at a five year old who’s only line is “you’re a dick” and then swell with nostalgic glee at a kiss stolen beneath the Mistletoe; the kind of movie that expects you to smile broadly when it’s revealed that the narrator (Steve Martin) is actually—well, I’m told that’s a spoiler, so I’ll leave that out, but five seconds of thought in the first five minutes ought to make the secret clear.
But, god bless ‘em, the cast is pretty amazing. Everyone seems completely earnest in their desire to become a new holiday favorite and they give it their absolute all. They’re as real as the material they’ve been given will allow, and there are moments of genuine sweetness that not even my cold façade could adequately resist. Enough, in fact, to make me wonder if there wasn’t a good movie somewhere in the mess that was delivered to us. The divergent focus and narrative jumping worked against the film as a whole, making it feel as though each tale was designed to appeal to different audiences. Arguably, that was the point—give different demographics something to appreciate, and everyone will love it!
That’s the theory, anyway. And it’s not a bad one, truth be told, at least from a marketing perspective. The problem is that movies that try to appeal to everyone end up appealing to no one. Instead, what you get is a blender full of decent ideas that crowd each other out, never allowing any single narrative to grow in interesting ways. As with decorating your house for the holidays, there’s a fine line between tasteful and gaudy. It’s an easier line to cross than you might think. The wrong strand of lights in the wrong place, and your house becomes the neighborhood eyesore for the month. That’s what happened with Love the Coopers. While I won’t fault anyone for enjoying the spirit of Christmas, sometimes it’s just a little too much and a bit too soon.
Love the Coopers is in theaters now.
One Response