Star Rating:

Christmas with the Coopers

Director: Jessie Nelson

Actors: Olivia Wilde, Diane Keaton

Release Date: Tuesday 1st December 2015

Genre(s): Factual, Family

Running time: 107 minutes

Christmas movies are, very often, like a Christmas dinner. They're usually overstuffed with embellishments, they're pleasant to look at and consume, but you're going to be sick afterwards. So it goes with Christmas With The Coopers, a sickly sweet family drama about a dysfunctional family coming together for the holidays.

The film follows various members of the Coopers as they make their way towards home and, along the way, share in various experiences. You have the parents, Diane Keaton and John Goodman, running errands and trying to keep the holiday spirit in the face of a crumbling marriage, the wayward daughter Olivia Wilde strikes up an unusual relationship with an Army veteran at an airport, struggling divorcee Ed Helms who's hoping to get a job and start over, kleptomaniac / chip-on-her-shoulder aunt Marisa Tomei who's arrested by robotic cop Anthony Mackie and patriarch Alan Arkin who frequents a dingy coffee shop with a pretty waitress played by Amanda Seyfried.

As you'd expect, each story is different - but there's an overarching theme and, naturally, all these stories coalesce in the third act. By and large, the performances are acceptable. Diane Keaton and John Goodman have a natural chemistry together and we do get the sense that they could have easily lived a life together. Ed Helms channels a much more realistic variation of his manic persona that works, however Alan Arkin simply barks euphemisms at Amanda Seyfried that we're supposed to accept as wisdom. Marisa Tomei's dynamic with Anthony Mackie is lacking; it's basically just a confessional that doesn't really go anywhere whilst Olivia Wilde's relationship with Army guy Jake Lacy feels utterly false.

In fact, the dialogue throughout the film feels false and mangled. This should come as no surprise, considering it's by the writer who adapted PS I Love You and Kate & Leopold, the film that had to be reshot because people figured out that Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman were actually having an incestuous relationship. Yes, really. Look it up. The long, breathy monologues by Olivia Wilde about people-watching is supposed to make us think she's a deep person with feelings, but it just comes off as forced. Likewise, Alan Arkin's relationship with Amanda Seyfried is just plain daft and the same goes for Marisa Tomei's slow drawing out of Anthony Mackie's troubled past.

Of course, these criticisms all hinge on the fact that it's just so sickly sweet that you're forcing it back up. It's all so tame and agreeable and the stories are so schmaltzy and one-note that there's not really much to keep you interested. The performances are fine, but the script and direction is so lazy and unoriginal that if this were on television during the Christmas period, you'd probably find sitting through it just because.

Fine for what it is but nothing all that special.