Reese Witherspoon’s Fan-Favorite Christmas Comedy with Angelina Jolie’s Dad Just Hit HBO Max
Netflix’s $82.7 billion play for Warner Bros is nearly sealed, but before WB’s library shifts to Netflix, a handful of holiday favorites are making a surprise pit stop on HBO’s streamer — including Reese Witherspoon’s chaotic crowd-pleaser Four Christmases.
Holiday rotation whiplash alert: Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn's wonderfully messy Christmas comedy 'Four Christmases' is back on streaming, and it's landed on Max just in time to spark family debates over who is the worst parent in the movie. Yes, I know there are loud rumors about Warner Bros. cozying up with Netflix after an eye-popping $82.7 billion number started floating around online. None of that is official, but here's what is happening right now: 'Four Christmases' is on Max first, with the expectation it will pop up on Netflix in a later window. Timing! Licensing! Extremely normal corporate stuff.
The setup
Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) have a simple holiday policy: dodge their families. They book tropical getaways, they lie about charity trips, they do anything to avoid the annual chaos. Then a fogged-in airport nukes their plans, a TV news camera outs them, and they end up cramming four separate Christmas visits with their four divorced parents into one day. What follows is a tour of old wounds, new disasters, and the kind of couple therapy no one asks for but everyone apparently needs.
Quick facts at a glance
- Director: Seth Gordon
- Cast: Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Duvall, Jon Favreau, Jon Voight (yes, Angelina Jolie's dad), Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen
- Rotten Tomatoes: 25% critics, 47% audience
- Runtime: 1h 28m
- Box office: $168 million worldwide on an $80 million budget (about 2.1x its cost), per The Numbers
Critics hated it, audiences showed up anyway
When it hit theaters in 2008, critics were not feeling the holiday spirit. The Tomatometer cratered at 25%, and a lot of the early backlash honed in on Vaughn and Witherspoon not quite clicking on screen. The behind-the-scenes chatter did not help. Trade outlets and Decider reported the leads clashed while filming, with Witherspoon allegedly nixing a planned steamier scene with Vaughn. True or not, the perception leaked into the discourse and the movie took its lumps.
Meanwhile, regular viewers shrugged and bought tickets. The film more than doubled its budget globally. Why? Because the movie gets one big thing right: family holidays are often chaotic, petty, and weirdly funny. You can feel the awkwardness, and then you can laugh at it.
Why it stuck as a holiday staple
'Four Christmases' is not a cocoa-and-carols fantasy. It leans into the stress: parents who overshare, siblings who wrestle, exes who linger, and childhood baggage that refuses to stay in the attic. The jokes are broad, sure, but the beats are honest, and the movie still circles back to something warm without getting syrupy.
The cast helps a lot. Witherspoon and Vaughn bring opposite energies that, intentional or not, work for a couple discovering they want different things. And the supporting bench is stacked: Robert Duvall grumbles like a champion, Sissy Spacek and Mary Steenburgen bring precision chaos, Jon Favreau goes full meathead, and Jon Voight glides in with gentle dad gravitas. Each parental stop plays like its own mini holiday short, which keeps the pace up and the disasters varied.
Underneath all the elbows and pratfalls, Brad and Kate are forced to reckon with commitment, honesty, and what 'family' actually means once you stop running. You leave with laughs and a little thawed heart, and that combo is why people keep circling back to it every December.
Where to watch
'Four Christmases' is streaming now on Max (still labeled HBO Max in some regions) and is expected to hit Netflix later in its licensing window. If your family gatherings are a contact sport, this one will feel uncomfortably relatable in the best way.