Documentary-film director, Seth Gordon, who shot last year’s superb documentary, “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” gets his first taste of the big-time today when his studio feature comes out today, “Four Christmases,” which stars Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as a couple forced to stomached four separate Christmases with their estranged families. As soon as it was announced the filmmaker would be transitioning directly from “The King of Kong” to a romantic comedy starring two incompatible stars, we thought it sounded like an awful idea. Which is now a belief that has been justified as the movie is holding a dismal 24% fresh rating over at rottentomatoes.com.
The director sat down with THR and discusses the transformation from making critically acclaimed indie-documentaries to a big-budgeted comedy, that the studio assumed would be an easy way to cash in on all those frustrated family members over the thanks-giving weekend.
“The hardest part of the transition was the sheer volume of opinions and interested parties and the huge amount of pressure as a result of the budget. When you’re making a film all by yourself, that requires you to have quite a bit of a point of view in order for anything to get done. The hard part (with “Christmases”) was never the filmmaking; the hard part was the politics and fielding and understanding all of the different opinions.”
Gordon continued to trudge forward and pretend that “Four Christmases” didn’t make him feel like blowing his brains out and compared it to the year in spent in Kenya documenting the re-building of a local school and his work on “King of Kong.” “I’m really interested in stories about identity — who I am now versus who I used to be,” Gordon said. “I think that’s really what ‘Kong’ was about. That’s what ‘Four Christmases’ is about, too. That’s a real thoughtline for me.”
“Four Christmases” releases wide beginning today, and despite its awful reviews, will most likely capture plenty who will be looking for any excuse to leave their homes this weekend, even if it means watching Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn sleepwalk through a movie.