Sometimes I hate being a snob. Really. I see people dancing uninhibited on screen; they’re having fun. Here is a moment to smile and all I can think is, “teens voluntarily dancing, happily dancing, with family members and only family members? Yeah. I don’t know who you’re trying to fool, but it isn’t me.” Could I slough it off? Sure. Will I? No. Because it just doesn’t make sense to me that the kid who was sooooooo nervous just hours earlier about talking to his dream girl has suddenly become the epitome of loose.
Look, you want a film narrated by the family dog? You think that’s cute when the dog destroys Christmas dinner because he’s “eating his feelings,” then love, honor and cherish the Coopers until the cows come home and narrate Coopers II. Me? Sorry. I’m staying poker-faced on this one.
Content to be a Love Actually knockoff, Love the Coopers is quick to remind us that the holidays are time for being summarily dismissed from theaters long before Christmas actually arrives. Well, what it really wanted to tell us is that families suck, but sometimes around Christmas, they suck less. In that vein, Coopers presented several tales, each one a tad on the depressing side and then cutting away quickly right at a down moment to the next before the first curdles like month-old milk.
This is also one of those films in which everybody is supposed to be related, but Lord if I could figure out how. Lessee if I can piece together the evidence …
• Sam (John Goodman) and Charlotte (Diane Keaton) are separating after forty years of marriage. Wow. That’s sad.
• Their son, Hank (Ed Helms) is unemployed and already separated from shrew Angie (Alex Borstein).
• Daughter Emma (Marisa Tomei) is a Grade A screw up and gets jailed for trying to steal a brooch in her mouth. Wait, she’s not a daughter? She’s Diane Keaton’s sister. Oh, HELL no. My faithful readers know I love it when the calendar doesn’t work. Diane Keaton turns 70 in January. Marisa Tomei is 50. They’re sisters … who grew up together a year or two apart. Of course they are.
• Patriarch Bucky (Alan Arkin) – and I don’t anticipate putting the word “patriarch” by the name “Bucky” ever again in my lifetime – is in love with dead-end waitress Ruby (Amanda Seyfried).
• Aunt June Squibb shows up to remind us she was really good in Nebraska.
• Somebody’s teen son Charlie (Timothée Chalamet) is lookin’ for love in all the wrong places [read: the mall]
• The best storyline in the bunch occurs when
somebody’s daughter, Eleanor (Olivia Wilde), deliberately hangs back at the airport to avoid family and consequently meets G.I. Joe (Jake Lacy – you might know him as “Peefarter”). These two seem to live an entire lifetime in three hours of delayed flights.
This is a classic “hot hand” tale – Coopers rides a storyline while it works, and then when it doesn’t, it switches fast; later on, it rejoins the tale in progress pretending that the monumental ugliness you saw was somehow dispelled in the interim. If that works for you, hats off to the editor. For me … less.
Love the Coopers is a terrible title. I’m sure the ambiguity was intended, but for fans of grammar like myself, I’m left wondering what it means. Is it an order: “Hey you! Love those Coopers!” ? Is it a random mild declaration, “you know, I hate Millers, but the Coopers are great. Love the Coopers.” Is it a sign off: “Happy Holidays. Love, the Coopers.” ? Is it a specific request to the Coopers themselves: “ ‘The’ is an important article. Love ‘the,’ Coopers.” ? Is it something else entirely? After seeing this film, I still couldn’t tell you which, and until that point at which I can, you guys certainly haven’t earned a second full star.
♪Everybody Loves the Coopers, so why don’t you?
Sure, not a single episode resolves true
I almost laughed when a saw this one scene
In retrospect, it was just the morphine
Not a sole Loves the Coopers, forget that goo
This movie kinda blew♫
Rated PG-13, 107 Minutes
D: Jessie Nelson
W: Steven Rogers
Genre: Love Actually ripoff
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Coopers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Lovers
♪ Parody inspired by “Everybody Loves a Clown”
