Love The Coopers

Premiered November 13, 2015.

It's Christmas time in Pittsburgh.

Charlotte (Diane Keaton) and Sam Cooper (John Goodman) have been married for 40 years but they have grown apart and have decided to separate. They agree not to tell their family about this until after Christmas.

Their son Hank (Ed Helms) has recently lost his job as a portrait photographer and is having problems paying for Christmas gifts for his kids.  Hank is also coping with life as a single father and has a rocky relationship with his ex-wife Angie (Alex Borstein).

Charlotte's sister Emma (Marisa Tomei) has always lived in the shadow of her big sister and resents this.  Emma wants to get her family a nice, expensive Christmas present in order to impress them. Since she is short on cash, Emma steals a broach from a department store by putting it in her mouth and gets busted for shoplifting.  It looks like she may well be spending Christmas in jail.  Emma tries to convince police Officer Williams (Anthony Mackie) to let her go free.

The Coopers' daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) has also flown in for Christmas, but doesn't want to face her parents alone.  She is currently in a relationship with a married man who is spending the holidays with his "real" family.  Eleanor decides to avoid parental disapproval by hanging out and drinking at the airport bar.  While avoiding her parents, she meets Joe (Jake Lacy), a soldier who is shipping out to combat.  Joe and Eleanor are polar opposites politically and socially, but they find each other intriguing.  His flight is delayed by snow and it looks like he'll be spending Christmas at the airport.  On the spur of the moment,  Eleanor tells Joe he can spend Christmas with her family, if he will pretend to be her boyfriend.  Joe thinks this is a bad idea, but still goes along with the plan.

Meanwhile, Charlotte's father Bucky (Alan Arkin), a retired teacher, eats breakfast every day at a local diner.  This gives him a chance to spend time with a young waitress named Ruby (Amanda Seyfried).  He recommends classic movies to Ruby and they chat and discuss films together.

Ruby shocks Bucky when she announces she will be moving to Hot Coffee, Mississippi after Christmas.  Bucky thinks it's a terrible idea.

Will this multi-generational holiday get-together end in disaster?    Or will the Christmas Spirit get the better of the Cooper clan?

J.A. Morris says:

Love The Coopers features lots of characters and a whole bunch of plots and subplots.  It adds up to a mixed bag.

I've been a big fan of Diane Keaton, John Goodman and Alan Arkin for a long time.  They've done lots of great work over the years and sometimes elevated lesser films.

Their presence is the best thing in the movie.  Goodman and Keaton are believable as a couple that's been together for 40 years but (apparently) fallen out of love.  Steve Martin serves as narrator, which adds some gravitas to the film.

The Coopers' St. Bernard Rags is an entertaining "animal actor" and a welcome presence.

Rags begs for food from Aunt Fishy (June Squibb)

With so many characters, it's not surprising that some are underdeveloped.  Ruby seems to exist for little more reason than to give Bucky someone to admire.    The scenes that feature Emma with Officer Williams feel like they were phoned in from another movie.

The soundtrack of Love The Coopers is pretty good and makes the movie more enjoyable.  It contains lots of new and old recordings of Christmas songs, my favorite of the bunch being Otis Redding's "Merry Christmas Baby."  Sting's recording of "Soul Cake" is a nice surprise.  It also features three songs performed by Bob Dylan that have nothing to do with Christmas, but they're still great songs.

If you're a fan of Christmas movies and/or a fan of the actors featured, Love The Coopers is worth seeing.  But the lack of character development for half the cast makes it something that  .

J.A. Morris' rating:







.5

2 and a half candy canes.

RigbyMel says:

This movie has a great cast, but unfortunately the material they are given to work with is just a bit too cliched to make it a great movie.  Not an un-watchable movie, but not a great one.

The many, many characters all feel believable, but each beat of the plot is something we've all seen dozens of times before.  Eleanor and Joe are polar opposites - he's a conservative Christian and she says the only god she believes in is the voice of Nina Simone.  They conspire to deceive her family and (SPOILER - but not a surprise) start to fall for each other in the process.  

Emma has an impromptu psychological session with Officer Williams as he's driving her to jail.  We learn that both of them have issues (surprise, surprise) and that they both are lonely during the holidays.  We get scenes with awkward teens, bickering exes, running gags involving a small child being rude, singing around a Christmas tree (more than once!).   It's like a checklist of holiday tropes, but because of the caliber of the actors involved the movie actually works better than perhaps it should.  The performances make you care about the characters.

Something that I enjoyed about the movie was the way that we see people's Christmas "ghosts", memories of the past that are briefly seen (or imagined) by the various characters throughout the film.  Christmas is most decidedly a holiday about nostalgia and memory and I thought the way the film handled these "Ghosts of Christmas Past" was cool.

To be fair,  a lot of Christmas movies rely on tropes.  Everyone can relate to family drama around the holidays.

Interestingly,  the "You can't regift a family" tagline on the poster (see above) leads one to think this is going to be more of a broadly comedic movie than it, in fact, is.  There is comedy, but it's gentle rather than broad and focused on interactions between the many characters.

If you love holiday films, Love The Coopers is worth seeing at least once, but I don't know that it absolutely needs to be seen on a big screen.    Maybe wait to catch it on cable or streaming next Christmas?

RigbyMel's rating:

2 candy canes

The Night Before

Premiered November 20, 2015.
Note:This movie is the raunchiest film we've reviewed here so far.  If you have kids, don't take them with you to see this movie.  If you're a kid, you don't want to watch this in the presence of your parents.  Trust us, 
-J.A. Morris & RigbyMel

“Gentleman, 14 years ago I lost my parents and you guys have been with me every single Christmas since then, but tonight, we have decided to end this tradition.”
-Ethan

During the Christmas season of 2001, Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) lost his parents in a car accident.  Since then his best friends Chris (Anthony Mackie) and Isaac (Seth Rogen) have spent a debauched Christmas Eve with Ethan so that he won't feel alone during the holidays.  For several years, they have heard about a mythic "holy grail" of Christmas parties called the Nutcracker Ball but have never been able to score an invitation.

Their lives are changing.  Isaac is about to become a father.  Chris' football career has finally taken off and he is a star in sports and (especially) social media.  The three friends decide this will be the final Christmas Eve they will spend together like this.

While working as an "elf" at a corporate Christmas party, Ethan comes gets hold of tickets to the Nutcracker Ball!

Meanwhile, Isaac's wife Betsy (Jillian Bell) has collected every drug in the book and given it to Isaac for the festivities as an early Christmas present.

Isaac gazes into the box that holds his cornucopia of drugs!

A stretch humvee limo is booked, they stop off to pick up some weed from their long time drug dealer, Mr. Green (Michael Shannon), and the evening begins.

Ethan, Isaac and Chris perform "Christmas In Hollis" at a karaoke bar.

However, their evening gets off to a rough start.  At a karaoke bar, Chris meets a fan who calls herself Rebecca (Ilana Glazer) and they quickly get romantic.  While Chris is ... distracted, Rebecca swipes the marijuana he'd gotten to impress one of his football teammates known as "The Messiah" (Aaron Hill).

Chris meets Rebecca.

Isaac tries the cocaine from his wife's "gift box" and gets quickly intoxicated.  He proceeds to record a video on his phone wherein he expresses how deeply freaked out he is about his impending fatherhood.  He's pretty sure he's not ready to be a parent.   Matters become more complicated when Isaac accidentally swaps phones with Sarah (Mindy Kaling), a mutual friend, and worries that his wife might see his incriminating freakout video.

Ethan runs into his ex-girlfriend Diana (Lizzy Caplan), who broke up with him because of his commitment issues.  His continued refusal to meet her parents was the last straw.  Ethan realizes that misses her and wants to get back together, but their encounter in the karaoke bar does not go well.

The three spend the rest of the night searching for Isaac's phone, Chris' weed, and the location of the Nutcracker Ball.

Will their Christmas Eve quests be successful?  Or will disaster strike?

J.A. Morris says:

The Night Before is a good comedy with solid performances by all the principles.   Gordon-Levitt, Mackie and Rogen are convincing as old friends who would do anything for each other.  Most of the other actors are also well-cast.

Michael Shannon is excellent as drug dealer Mr. Green.  Shannon goes back and forth between menacing and caring, sometimes acting as sort of a "big brother" figure to the three friends, and scaring the daylights out of them during other parts of the film.

I'll admit I'm not a fan of Miley Cyrus' music, but she's funny in a cameo where she plays herself.

There are lots of funny scenes, but I'm reluctant to go into detail that would spoil them.  Let's just say highlights include a drugged up visit to Midnight Mass, a ride in a horse-drawn sleigh that goes awry, and a brawl with two guys in Santa suits.

The Night Before contains a bunch of references to other Christmas specials and movies.  Rebecca says her behavior is inspired by the Grinch and other holiday villains.  When Chris tries to pursue her, Rebecca humiliates him in a manner inspired by Home Alone.

This movie also features a good soundtrack of holiday tunes.  Darlene Love's recording of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is one of my favorite Christmas songs.  It's used nicely here to accompany a fast drive through New York City on Christmas morning.

The Night Before is the first "adult" comedy we've reviewed.  It's another sign that there is "something for everyone" when it comes to Christmas programming.  It's very funny and is recommended

J.A. Morris' rating:

3 candy canes.

RigbyMel says:

I am very picky about raunchy comedies, there needs to be a bit more going on than just the raunch.   When I saw the trailer for The Night Before,  I wasn't quite sure where the heart of this film was.

Fortunately,  this is a raunchy Christmas comedy with a heart of gold.    It deals with broad themes like growing up, friendship, family (both blood related and not), and loss with good humor, while also demonstrating that holiday movies don't have to be saccharine in their delivery to be good.   Moreover, it was nice to see a New York in which there were people of various races and faiths on film.  Art could stand to do a bit more imitating life where diversity in Christmas movies in concerned.  Plus, the characters aren't just stereotypes, you feel for them and understand where they're all coming from.

It is also very, very funny, which helps.   I laughed and winced and enjoyed the whole movie.    It's not deep or anything, but it is a lot of fun.

RigbyMel's rating:

3 candy canes