Love the Coopers: Early Christmas present worth opening

3 out of 4 stars

Take a couple whose 40-year marriage in dissolving, toss in a black-sheep daughter, sprinkle some good old fashioned sibling rivalry and top it off with a thief and what do you have?

Love the Coopers, which is the latest dysfunctional family film that Hollywood lets knock on moviegoers’ doors every few years around the holidays just to let them know the genre isn’t dead.

But that’s not say the genre is an unwelcome guest – Clark Griswold and his crew are still as funny today in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation as they were in 1989, and The Family Stone is worth a few laughs, even if it can be found on some cable channel pretty much every day in December.

Love the Coopers is the latest family film to crash the holiday season. But unlike Deck the Halls, Home for the Holidays and Home Alone that were more like unwanted guests who showed up and ate all your food, you’ll enjoy spending time with the Coopers.

They bring more stars to the table than any comparable film, as Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Ed Helms, Marisa Tomei, Alan Arkin, Olivia Wilde and June Squibb are all one big, happy family that puts the “fun” in dysfunctional.

The premise of Love the Coopers is sliced from the same cookie cutter as so many holiday family movies: Extended family convenes for Christmas Eve. Unexpected visitors show up. The meal is served. Words get said. Adults start bickering. Somebody breaks up. Things just go from there.

And let’s face it: the audience never cares what happens next – as long as it’s funny.

Funny – not hilarious – is the best word to describe Love the Coopers, which is a 110-minute break from reality. Isn’t that why we watch these types of movies? Because every family, at least to some extent, is a little bit loony. And doesn’t watching a family that’s whacko make us feel better about our own?

“Everyone is afraid of being exposed for everything that they are,” Helms recently told USA Today. “We present a sort of edited version of ourselves to the world, especially with our families, where there’s just so much baggage and so much expectation. When you get to explore that, it’s actually kind of uplifting because it reinforces that we’re in this together. We’re all kind of stumbling through and just trying to make the best of it.”

Fortunately for director Jessie Nelson and writer Steven Rogers, the Coopers have no shortages of nutjobs to tell their story.

Charlotte (Keaton) is overbearing and refuses to acknowledges her kids are no longer the youngsters who watched her drink herself into a stupor during previous Christmases; Sam (Goodman) is hoping to salvage his marriage to Charlotte that’s seen much brighter days; and Hank (Helms) is divorced, unemployed and a father of three.

But wait, it gets better. Emma (Tomei) steals; Eleanor (Wilde) wants affection from men but doesn’t trust them; Bucky (Arkin) just wants to eat a family meal in peace; and Aunt Fishy (Squibb) is a few McNuggets short of a Happy Meal, because, well, doesn’t every family have that relative?

Nelson continuously plays to each cast member’s strengths, but teaming Keaton, who is no stranger to these types of movies after playing cancer-stricken mom Sybil in 2005’s The Family Stone, with the versatile Goodman gives the film a foundation on which the rest of the characters build.

“It just speaks to a universal family experience,” Helms said. “There’s frustration, there’s love, there’s support, there are long-held grudges, but ultimately, there’s this sense that we’re actually better off all being together.”

It’s a lesson that’s certainly true in Love the Coopers, even if the movie should really be called “Like the Coopers.”