PICK OF THE LITTER: Jennifer (Jennifer Aniston) and John (Owen Wilson) make their selection in Marley & Me.
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FOUR CHRISTMASES The purpose of trailers, as I see it, is to showcase the film's best scenes in an effort to get folks to the box office during opening week and beyond. The trailer for Four Christmases fails this test, as it focuses almost exclusively on barf gags, pratfalls and other broad, physical comedy sure to draw the yahoo crowd but not necessarily anyone else. A more representative trailer, on the other hand, would have revealed a movie that's worth seeing – a smart, tart confection whose observations about family dysfunction will make viewers squirm in their seats even as the laughs pour off the screen. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon headline as Brad and Kate, a couple who always bypass their families at Christmastime in order to take overseas vacations. But complications force the pair to visit their relatives after all, and since both sets of parents (Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek are his, Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen are hers) are divorced, that means four familial gatherings in one day. It proves to be a grueling endurance test, as each is humiliated in turn by parents, siblings and other assorted in-laws. Movies of this nature always follow the humor with an excruciating final half-hour of phony moralizing or cheap sentiment, so it's a credit that this one not only keeps this sober-minded portion of the film short but also makes it develop naturally from the situations that have preceded it (in other words, the character evolution feels natural rather than the work of a hack screenwriter). But honestly, who's here for anything besides laughs? On that front, Four Christmases soundly delivers on the ho-ho-hos. ***
FROST/NIXON If all high school history classes were as grandly entertaining as the historical flicks penned by Peter Morgan, no student would ever again be caught slumbering in his seat. Morgan, who previously wrote The Queen, here adapts his own play, and together he and director Ron Howard open it up so that the end result feels much more vibrant than merely a constricted stage piece plunked down in front of a camera. Blessed by an exquisite cast, the two men keep the wheels turning, offering a propulsive look at the most widely loathed U.S. president until George W. Bush stumbled into sight. Set after the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation, the picture concerns itself with the attempts of Nixon (Frank Langella) to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of political irrelevance by holding a series of one-on-one interviews with British TV host David Frost (Michael Sheen). Nixon believes that he can easily exert control over this show biz personality, and he may be right, as Frost initially has trouble keeping up with his mentally agile interviewee. Several actors have played Tricky Dick on celluloid (Anthony Hopkins among them), but Langella bests them all with an riveting portrayal that goes beyond mimicry. He depicts the former president as a haunted man struggling to salvage his legacy, a scrappy fighter who refuses to yield even a square inch to his challengers. If many audience members don't feel the slightest bit of pity for the Nixon that Langella brings to life, that certainly isn't the fault of the actor – it's simply that too many Americans will always view Richard Milhous as monster rather than man. ***1/2
MARLEY & ME Even given my status as a big dog lover (and whether you take that to mean a big lover of dogs or a lover of big dogs, either interpretation works), the notion of spending two hours watching puppies frolic during the course of Marley & Me seemed like a pretty one-note way to spend a matinee. Welcome, then, to one of the season's most pleasant surprises, as this family film proves to be far more thematically rich than its simplistic trailer reveals. Major-league screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, Get Shorty) and middle-league screenwriter Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) adapt John Grogan's fact-based novel about his family's pet, a Labrador retriever named Marley. Both journalists, John (Owen Wilson) and wife Jennifer (Jennifer Aniston) agree that Marley is "the world's worst dog," given his penchant for always getting into trouble. But thankfully, the movie doesn't devolve into a series of comic scenes revolving around leg humpings and yard droppings. Instead, as John and Jennifer add some children to the equation, it becomes a clear-eyed look at the difficulties in raising a family, all the more so when there's a lumbering beast driving everyone mad. Ultimately, though, the film makes a point that every dog owner – indeed, every pet owner – long ago took as gospel: A family doesn't begin and end with merely its two-legged members. Alternately sweet, sad and sentimental, Marley & Me represents cinema as dog's best friend. ***
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