![]() They start to drive him crazy and then things really get out of hand when the family shows up, including Glynis Johns and Christine Baranski.Ī Puerto Rican family is thrown into a tizzy when they get together at Christmas and the parents (Alfred Molina and Elizabeth Pena) announce they are getting a divorce.Ī widower gathers his family for Christmas. ![]() The darkest comedy on this list has Denis Leary as a thief who takes a bickering couple (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) as hostages. The outstanding cast makes this a very touching story. One of the earliest of the film in this genre is a 1952 British film about a clergyman whose adult children are all hiding secrets from him. The most entertaining part of that film may be the chance to see very early appearances from big stars Timothee Chalamet and Molly Gordon. In “Love the Coopers,” Olivia Wilde impulsively asks a solider she meets in the airport (Jake Lacy) to pretend to be her boyfriend. In “The Family Stone,” Sarah Jessica Parker plays a woman who is spending Christmas with her brother’s family. These two dysfunctional family perennials sometimes get mixed up because Diane Keaton plays the family mother and grandmother in both of them and both are about families that keep secrets, disappoint each other, get mad about disappointing each other, and get on each other’s nerves. “The Family Stone” and “Love the Coopers” Here are some that may not be classic but are favorites for a lot of people. But there are also a lot of holiday movies about dysfunctional families, some comic, some darkly comic, and some bittersweet. This too-muchness is an asset, though, when group arguments crest into chaos, which they often do.Copyright Universal 2016We all love the sweet holiday movies with snowflakes gently falling on the upturned faces of happy families, where any conflict is minor enough to be resolved in 90 minutes and there are lots of hugs and cookies. OK, OK, fine: Everyone’s invited to the plot! The snappy dialogue sometimes feels too forced and cutesy, and there’s a fine, occasionally crossed line between quirk and contrivance. “Moonshine” can feel a little overstuffed, as if all the squabbling siblings had each lobbied to get a fair amount of story for themselves - and their offspring and their plus-ones. But it all unfolds in a fun, beachy way rather than as part of an anguished plumbing of the darkness within. ![]() Oh sure, tempers run high and criminal activity abounds. In more doleful hands, this becomes “Ozark.” Here, though, it’s closer to “Gilmore Girls,” “Schitt’s Creek” or “Northern Exposure,” a festival of small-town oddballs with the characters’ pain buffeted by warmth. “This is how the war starts,” one sister says, not joking. The Finley-Cullens also dabble in drug-dealing, scandalous secrets, shady police behavior, substance abuse and generation-spanning rivalries. Haphazard management of the hotel turns out to be the least of her troubles, though. So when the aunt’s will makes Lidia the primary owner, she decides to make a go of it, bringing her sullen teenagers and ditching her crummy husband. Her parents and some of her siblings run the Moonshine, a shabby but endearing collection of beachy cottages and various outbuildings, but only to the degree that hippies ever really “run” anything. “Moonshine” follows the Finley-Cullen clan, mostly artsy-earthy types except for Lidia (Jennifer Finnigan), the big-city sister who returns home to the family’s Nova Scotia compound when her aunt dies. Why not you? “Moonshine,” a Canadian dramedy available on the CW’s website, has enough dysfunction and wild behavior to largely disabuse one of this dream … but enough Canadian charm that it still holds a certain appeal. I mean, someone lives at the shore, someone makes the lobster rolls, someone owns the family estate that doubles as a resort. ![]() Ah, the recurring fantasy of moving to vacation. ![]()
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