Ned Fleming, his wife and younger son, traveled during Christmas holidays from Michigan to California to visit Stephanie’s first birthday and get acquainted with her boyfriend, after having more than glimpse the back in a collective video call. Laird, the young man in question, is an ultra-billionaire from Silicon Valley, master of a dreamy hypertechnology, but also eccentric erotoman, unable to control language, insensitive to any socially established limit. Although the boy seems to conquer the rest of the family, Ned persists in considering him his worst enemy, especially since Laird confesses to wanting to make his daughter the fateful proposition.
In the company of Ben Stiller (here as a producer in Jonah Hill), director and co-writer John Hamburg specializes in the “meet the parents” genre and continues here on that road, while trying to do the collision and Focus on the goal of the Christmas movie, the most lucrative category, able to beat, at best, imperious classics. This does not seem to be the case: the duel between Bryan Cranston and James Franco is part of commonplace clashes, and despite Franco pleasantly joking with his own image, his city and his passion for contemporary art, there is All of a level of conflict, set on belonging to one at a time expiring (the era of printed paper) and the other to an already present future, which is too easy and often dramatically dramatically reduces the comic potential until it is reduced To the measure of a long scene on the water. Not for the good protagonists, it would be a problem, as the rest of the cast is not up to, except for the character Gustav, entrusted to Keegan-Michael Key, and a point of close proximity to that aspiration of revisiting the classic , Also known as a cinematic model, which is one of the best intentions of the film. His guru-handyman is, in fact, the old-time butler like the molecular cuisine with chicken with potatoes.
Towards the goal, Franco and his have the promised effect, long considered impossible: in the end, in short, it smacks and there is even the right Christmas touch, but when Gustav announces that for the moment it’s all and returns us to the next Appointment, we are not sure we can accept the invitation for a sequel, we prefer to make somebody out of the movie and admit that this is a too big step for which we are not ready, at least not now.