Movie review of “Love the Coopers”: Olivia Wilde and Jake Lacy save this comedy-drama about a family reunion on Christmas Eve. You won’t even like them. The main storyline revolves around Charlotte (Diane Keaton) and Sam (John Goodman), two empty-nesters finding themselves at a crossroads in their marriage as they await their family to arrive for Christmas. Their son Hank (Ed Helms) is an out-of-work department store photographer and divorcee trying to raise three kids. Emma (Tomei) is jealous of her sister Charlotte’s (Keaton) purported contentment: “You could be happy licking an envelope”, she says, unaware of the Chernobyl toxicity between Charlotte and Sam (Goodman) that wafts from a canceled vacation decades back.
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Annoying Eleanor thinks the most horrifying thing ever is her mother’s disapproving expression. Also in this dim yuletide tale is police officer Percy Williams (Anthony Mackie). Most of the actors, Goodman and Arkin especially, deserve better but are hamstrung by Steven Rogers’ largely unfunny script. It has potential at times, like in the slightly sweet relationship between Bucky and Ruby, but often devolves to farting-dog gags, an sex joke involving a popular Christmas carol and more awkward make-out sessions than your average junior prom. So there’s that, too.
Toward the end of “Love the Coopers”, a character invokes the spirit of Christmas by mentioning Clarence, the fussy angel from Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Charlotte and Sam bicker wherever they go, and you feel like the third wheel of someone’s public breakup. Wilde and Lacy have fantastic chemistry, and director Jessie Nelson knows it, as evidenced by her really long, really tight close-ups of Wilde’s stunning face.
Fight they do. Among the picturesque white Christmas tableau “Love the Coopers” is quite a dark and cynical film, with familial spats that are too real to be comfortable. Mostly it’s just the dragging, unnatural, square story that feels patched together and forced into a stubborn round hole.
Joshua Terry is a freelance writer and photojournalist who appears weekly on “The KJZZ Movie Show” and also teaches English composition for Salt Lake Community College. “Love the Coopers” is guilty of having these branches of the story existent, even if the unneeded stories are likable. With the awards season approaching fast, studios rush to release their best movies of the year around this time, putting myself in what I like to call “positivity limbo”, the time in which I give far more positive reviews than I normally would, always making me doubt my critical eye for film.
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Fittingly given that its title sounds like a demand, “Love the Coopers” peddles holiday sorrow, cheer and uplift with off-putting insistence.
