This was pretty bad, I went to see it with a couple of friends from Brazil (a straight couple-- they liked it and laughed quite a bit).
In Four Christmases, Vince Vaughan and Reese Witherspoon play a couple terrified of spending Christmas with their families -- they don' want to confront their ghosts. Their attempt spend Christmas away from their families in Fiji fails when all flights are grounded due to bad weather and they end up on TV (this after having lied to their families -- they had said they were going to Burma to save children or sth like that). Seeing them on TV, their families talk them into spending time with them.
We have a bit of gay content. While visiting Reese's mom family, we learn that the husband of Reese's sister (played by Kristen Chenoweth) "has experienced with men" -- Kristen reveals the news as a way to tell Reese how much she knows about her husband (and, to a lesser extent, how forgiving she is); Reese, meanwhile, knows nothing about her boyfriend Vince. Kristen might have talked about the gay experience in a somewhat positive light, but I think it came off as being just for laughs, at our expense.
Later in the same visit, Reese`s mom shows Vince pictures of Reese's lesbian phase (she basically had a very butch friend growing up; but soon after we learn Reese didn't actually know her friend was a lesbian). Vince shows what appears to be his support and understanding of the "lesbian phase" and I did want to see the scene in a good light, but at the end, again, I think it was all really just for laughs, at our expense ("at us, not with us" king of thing).
I must say, though, that if this is the way that homophobia is going to be portrayed, we are probably on a good track as at least there seems to have been an effort to not just go all purely derogatory on us; as I pointed out, the light can even arguably be seen as neutral to positive.
Independently of the gay content, the movie is pretty bad -- a waste of Reese's (and ours) time.
Comments