Review: Anywhere But Home

This one's just about digestible rom-corn. And it even comes way past the season it was obviously designed for. Originally titled Four Christmases, Anywhere But Home seeks to stress that it's all about the family, writes Rashid Irani.

Anywhere But Home
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon
Direction: Seth Gordon
Rating: ** ½

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This one's just about digestible rom-corn. And it even comes way past the season it was obviously designed for. Originally titled Four Christmases, Anywhere But Home seeks to stress that it's all about the family.

Love them or loathe them, you can't live without them. That's the lesson learnt by this live-in-couple (Vaughn-Witherspoon) who'd rather be in the Fiji islands on X'mas than with their extended families in the San Francisco suburbs.

A fog plays villain. Air-flight cancelled. And so our twosome has to be with their parents, brothers, sisters, bratty kids and hello, even a raunchy grandma.

The gags are of the tumble-off-the-roof variety and the humour is hardly ha-ha. Both Vaughn and Witherspoon attempt to keep the pot boiling with their high energy. As the parents, Mary Steenburgen, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight and Robert Duvall are wasted in roles beneath their stature.

See only if you're stranded outside a multiplex.