It’s a perfect time for Christmas movies to start coming out, seeing as the decorations have been up in the stores since like September.  And so, we’re tackling Four Christmases today, a movie that shows that sometimes, time with the family is the best gift of all.

Even if you don’t notice it at first.

This time, a young couple who’s not terribly interested in getting married, usually manages to duck their family obligations around the holidays by making up elaborate stories and going off to various getaways instead.   But a surprise San Francisco fogbank socks in the airport irrevocably, and so the four are left forced to spend Christmas in the last place on earth they want to…with their families.

Families.  FOUR of them.  Both of their families are divorced, and thus, they’ll have to spend four Christmases in just one day.

What’s so unnerving about this movie is that it veers so wildly between hilarious and awkward that it almost can’t decide whether it’s supposed to be funny or uncomfortable.  It’s like the fat kid at school…he’s trying desperately to be funny, but it’s actually just about as sad.

Each of the families is deranged for its own reason, and believe me, they’re deranged.  The least of the deranged is a family of backwoods amateur ultimate fighters.  It gets worse from there.

It’s awkward.  It’s painful, in spots.  But it’s also got a lot of humor and warmth to it.  There’s lots to enjoy here.  We’ve all seen this kind of thing before. This is Christmas at its absolute.  Family, friends, lovers, growth.  Life.

Four Christmases is like LIFE.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives this strange little allegory a six out of ten.  There’s lots to like here, and there’s lots to feel uncomfortable about.  It IS life.  Take it for what it’s worth.

There appears to be some excellent talent in FAQ About Time Travel, a British film full of British humor, but the movie trailer lacks American spunk (if there is such a thing).

 

MTV has a new show that resembles ‘Cops’ for the MTV generation.

MTV viewers are about to find out that you can run and you can hide but when the police catch up with you, you’d better have your story straight. The network will give the phrase “You’re so busted” a whole new meaning in a daily dose of police busts and outrageous infractions with the series premiere of “Busted.”

Check out this interesting new clip from Disaster Movie, the latest genre spoof from filmmakers Jason Friedbeg and Aaron Seltzer, the team that parodied the teen-horror genre in Scary Movie, cliche romantic comedies in Date Movie, overblown blockbusters in Epic Movie, and the ultra-macho 300 in Meet The Spartans. Disaster Movie stars Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, Carmen Electra, Kim Kardashian, G-Thang, Nicole Parker, Crista Flanagan and Ike Barinholtz.

Here’s an interesting little scoop. My.spill.com managed to get a hold of Michael Bay’s unsolicited script for The Dark Knight, which of course got instantly rejected by Warner Bros, who released Christopher Nolan’s current record-breaker. The site manages to post a couple of pages of said script, revealing the extent of Bay’s “talents”. Quality moments include a description of Rachel Dawes as: “She is the hottest woman in the world, but she wears glasses because she is also the smartest woman in the world”, the attention given to Bruce Wayne’s pecs, and the slow-mo sequences of the Batmobile narrowly avoiding civilians happening “seventeen times”.

Okay, obviously this is a joke, but in every joke there is some truth, and I imagine if Michael Bay ever attempted a Batman script, we’d end up with something pretty similar. Kudos to My Spill for coming up with one of the funniest parodies in months!