It is a modern-day tradition that fills many a family with dread and trepidation: the trip to the relatives' home on Christmas. Instead of a day filled with relaxation, joy, and, God forbid, celebration of the true meaning of Christmas, it is a day of tension. Those who make the annual pilgrimage to the folks' or in-laws' home might relate to the holiday season falling a bit short of joyous.

This is the premise of Four Christmases, the latest Vince Vaughn-fueled holiday followup to last year's enjoyable Fred Claus. Inspired casting of Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Mary Steenburgen, and Sissy Spacek hint at the potential of this being a perennial holiday favorite.

Such prospects are quickly dashed with clichèd inclusions of vulgarity, puking babies, and bratty kids that rob the film of its charm and its humanity. Even the tiresome, non-religious, and non-threatening moral of "nothing is more important than family" falls flat in the mean-spirited and cynical manner in which it is communicated.

Vaughn and Witherspoon portray Brad and Kate, a co-habitating couple wary of marriage and commitment. The arrival of the holiday season renews their annual "vacation" away from their respective families. Masking their self-indulgent globe-trotting under the guise of a "humanitarian mission" to a third-world nation, the couple explains to their relatives that they will not be visiting for the holidays. All is well until their flight is canceled by inclement weather and their spurned relatives see them on live television being interviewed by a news reporter in the crowded airport terminal. Forced to stay home, they have no choice but to visit each of their divorced parent's homes: a whopping four visits in one exhausting day. Never mind the implausibility of this, as the couple crams more into one day than most can do in a week.

Only one of the visits is inspired. Duvall as Brad's acerbic father and his two maniacal brothers, hilariously played by Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw, are the highlights of the film. From there, however, each visit grows increasingly tiresome—Steenburgen as Kate's flirtatious mother (hooked up with an evangelical preacher played over-the-top by Dwight Yoakam) and Spacek as Brad's hippie mother (who has shacked up with one of his old friends—yuck). The worst of the bunch is the final visit to Kate's father played by Jon Voight. It is here that the couple experiences a half-hearted epiphany that family is important and that, differences aside, love can cover a multitude of sins. Hardly earth-shattering stuff, and even its watered-down sentimentality and secularism comes across as uninspired and tepid.

Vaughn, a usual comic locomotive, runs out of steam about a third of the way through. Even his energy and mile-a-minute diatribes cannot sustain this film. Oscar-winners Witherspoon, Spacek, and Duvall look embarrassed to be involved in this turkey. Poor editing with scenes of Witherspoon looking different in each cut-away point to the film being the victim of extensive revisions and re-shoots. Perhaps the filmmakers were valiantly trying to find something to redeem this muddled mess.

In the end, Four Christmases is a missed opportunity to highlight a primarily modern phenomenon of celebrating the holidays in a culture of divided and broken homes. Unfortunately, it is commonplace for many to spend many a major holiday jaunting to and fro to multiple homes from each side of the family. Not to sound like I'm longing for the good ol' days of Ozzie and Harriet, but the time of celebrating a sacred holiday under one roof with multiple families united by marriage is becoming less than the norm—to the detriment of society and community. Add that to the overt commercialization and rampant consumerism and you have a recipe for a holiday that is the furthest thing from "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." The very day that celebrates the birth of the One who came to reconcile man to his creator and to unite us to one another in His name has become a day to triumph division and tolerate what keeps us apart. Instead of highlighting the hopelessness of this mindset, Four Christmases tries to find something noble in it—and the film fails miserably in doing so. In this way, inadvertently, the film does give us a glimpse of truth.