Love The Coopers is a hopeful Christmas movie that focuses too much on the drama and not enough on the love, until the last moment. Read below for my Love The Coopers Review.

When four generations of the Cooper clan come together for their annual Christmas Eve celebration, a series of unexpected visitors and unlikely events turn the night upside down, leading them all toward a surprising rediscovery of family bonds and the spirit of the holiday. (Source IMDB.com)

LOVE THE COOPERS – REVIEW

Although the Coopers are a group of hopeful romantics that can’t seem to make it work until the last moment of Christmas Eve, the romance of the film is outweighed by the drama and tension that introduces it in the first place. Although the movie attempts to bring realism to the screen with the uncomfortable family truths (most of us might endure every Christmas get together), it spends too much time building up the family troubles. Meanwhile it leaves that cinematic fictional Christmas happiness I expected when seeing the trailer for this hopeful addition to my Holiday collection. Although, I feel this movie doesn’t reach that level of entertaining n’or heartwarming.

The connection of four different love stories that all involve one family succeeds in providing Christmas miracles, but fails to take the easy path there. While an entertaining and at times humorous, the majority of the movie drives home the message that going home for the holidays is something everyone regrets and hates, until it’s literally almost over – when everyone is exhausted of trying to meet their families’ standards, they can all bond over the fact that life isn’t perfect, but they have each other.

This movie could have ditched the drama and continued with the ridiculous antics much like Christmas With The Kranks or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I enjoyed the dynamic relationships presented, but not the connections or awkward conversations, especially between Diane Keaton & John Goodman – who are contemplating divorce after 40 years.

THE INTERTWINING PLOT:

The happy couple that’s been married for 40 years wants to spend their last Christmas with their family unknown to the fact they’re about to get divorced. The son who is currently going through a divorce is told to find new love. The screw-up daughter brings a stranger in an army jacket to dinner to try & impress the parents, while the mother’s cowardly younger sister gets arrested, trying to steal a broach she planned on giving to her sister. And finally, the great grandfather who everyday drinks coffee and makes polite conversation with the pretty waitress Ruby decides, on her last day at the diner, to let her experience a proper Christmas that she missed out on as a child – being the only daughter in a dysfunctional family. Not to mention the batty old Aunt Fishy that plays the comic relief card all too well. Yet all of them manage to make it to the Coopers’ household for Christmas Eve dinner, until great grandfather has a stroke.

When they’re all waiting for results on his condition at the hospital, all of them in their own way remember to take the romantic moments as they come by and that love & life belong together.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

All while I enjoy a good complexly woven Christmas story, it needed more love & happiness earlier on. Even when one character became happier, the rest seemed to add more drama to the flames of their own lives. Enjoyable, yet could’ve been touched up.

Apart from that, Steve Martin voices the narrator/the Cooper’s dog and does a great job at that.

What did you think of my Love The Coopers review? Have you seen Love The Coopers? What did you think of it?

Comment below and let us know!

11/13/2015 – 12:21 am

by James