t’s November, so that means that it’s time to start celebrating Christmas. Sure, the actual day is well over 1 month away, but this is the time of year that we start getting bombarded by movies and TV specials about the most lovingly commercial of all holidays. Each year theaters are filled with new films cranked out by the Hollywood machine vying to become future Christmas classics. Sadly nothing appearing on screens in 2008 is worthy of that title. However, there is one movie coming out that is at least won’t make you want to gouge your eyes out in disgust: Four Christmases.

The movie stars Vince Vaughn and Reeese Witherspoon as a professional couple who flee the country every year in December to avoiding having to spend time with their families. And they have some pretty damn good reasons for doing so too. Both come from divorced families, so they would have to visit four different sets of dysfunctional parents just to make it through the holidays. However, after their flight is canceled and a news crew broadcasts the fact that they are stuck in the country (admittedly the movie’s worst plot contrivance), the couple are forced to finally embark on their dreaded four Christmases (hey, I think I know where they got this title from).

While the movie ends on a predictably sentimental note, you have to give the filmmakers points for creating a Christmas movie that has such an openly anti-family tone. As a general rule, holiday movies are supposed to encourage audiences to embrace their kin over the Christmas season and buy as many presents as it takes to adequately express their love. But that’s not how most people actually feel when December 25 rolls around. No, the truth is that most people are frustrated by having to trudge out to their families house and play a game of “happy family” for a few days. The fact that a movie would come out of Hollywood that expresses these feelings is refreshingly subversive, even if the filmmakers loose their nerve in the final scenes.

Fortunately, up until that point audiences are treated to plenty of subversive Christmas fun. The movie is episodic by design and varies in quality depending on which family Vaughn and Witherspoon are visiting. However, the cast is so stacked with talented actors that barely a scene goes by without a belly laugh. Robert Duvall appears as Vaughn’s beer drinking father along with Jon Favreau as his UFC fighting son in the film’s funniest segment. The perpetually underused Mary Steenburgen shows up as Witherspoon’s passive aggressive born-again Christian mother (now dating a pastor played by Dwight Yoakam). Sissy Spacek has a hilarious role as Vaughn’s hippy mother who is now dating Vince’s childhood friend (a scene stealing Patrick Van Horn, another Swingers veteran). And finally, Jon Voight has the thankless role of being Reese’s stable father who teaches everybody that families should put aside their differences over the holidays (puke).