You’re doing it wrong.  Making movies, I mean.

Hey, remember when Vince Vaughn was cool?  Now he’s apparently the guy who makes Christmas movies (move over, Tim Allen!).  His Fred Claus follow up, Four Christmases, earned the top spot at the box office this weekend.  And with reviews like this, it’s no wonder!

The acrid, wince-worthy Four Christmases may well be part of the war on Christmas Bill O’Reilly’s always fog-horning about. Christmas and Christianity will survive it. But barely. –Chicago Tribune

When will filmmakers learn that if you start with Bad Santa and finish with It’s a Wonderful Life, you just end up with curdled eggnog? –Boston Globe

The movie boasts five Oscar winners. That figure exceeds by five the number of times I laughed at this cheap collection of icky jokes and stereotypes about heartland types who do horrible things like have babies and go to church. –New York Post

…more names lead only to more mania, as the serial domestic visits become set-piece excuses to ramp up the physical shtick and the attendant general hysteria. So it’s not enough to saddle Brad the lawyer with a less sophisticated brother – nope, Brad must get wrestled to the floor and beaten to a pulp by an imbecilic sibling with a chest full of tattoos and an accessorizing Mohawk. Nor can Kate simply get dragged off reluctantly to midnight mass – nope, Kate must be goaded into playing Mary in the church pageant and wear a really embarrassing costume and suffer stage fright like a biblical plague and, meanwhile over at Dad’s house, Brad isn’t just falling off a roof but he’s also clutching at an electrical cord that leads to a TV set that prompts an explosion that sets the curtains ablaze and … stop it, please. -GlobeandMail

My only question: who the hell watches this crap?  The movie had four screenwriters and they still thought a joke that was good enough to put in the trailer was Vince Vaughn saying his UFC fighter brothers were like “human cockfighters.”  Really?  You’re gonna steal some shit John McCain said 13 years ago?  That would’ve made the writers of Law and Order blush.  Oh, and did I mention the fighters were Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw?  Go f-ck yourself, Hollywood.

UPDATE: I glossed over it the first time I wrote this, but Milk, in the ten spot with $1.4 million, played on just 36 screens for a record-breaking $38,375 per screen.  THR says Sean Penn’s performance is generating “early plaudits”.  In related news, I have no idea what that means.

1. “Four Christmases,” $31.7 million.
2. “Bolt,” $26.6 million.
3. “Twilight,” $26.4 million.
4. “Quantum of Solace,” $19.5 million.
5. “Australia,” $14.8 million.
6. “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” $14.5 million.
7. “Transporter 3,” $12.3 million.
8. “Role Models,” $5.3 million.
9. “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” $1.7 million.
10. “Milk,” $1.4 million.

[CNN]