Love
The Coopers (2015/Lionsgate Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
B/C+ Sound: B/B- Extras: A Film: B
It's
Christmas and the Cooper clan gathers together for their once a year
family reunion. However, through the years the have drifted apart
and through past grudges and reasons of their own, they have come to
dread the family reunion. While they may smile and wish other people
Christmas cheer, will they be able to discover the Christmas spirit
for their own family? Jessie Nelson's Love
The Coopers
(2015) is the latest entry in this recent seasonal cycle of
dysfunction family films.
Four generations of the Coopers are
gathering at their grandparents home. Grandpa (John Goodman) and
Grandma (Diane Keaton) are getting a divorce because grandma is a
perfectionist and grandpa just wants just relax and to take the
vacation he dreamed for 40 years but never got around to it. An Aunt
who resents her perfect sister grandma for always being the
successful sister and is arrested shoplifting at the mall. Their son
who lost his job and losing his family in his divorce. Their jaded
elder daughter is having an affair with a married man and then brings
home a soldier who is just about to go on tour to pretend he is her
boyfriend to the family. The younger daughter is a waitress and
wants to have an affair with a customer who is old enough to be her
grandfather. And the grandkids are going through their parents
divorce and discovering sex and sexuality, while their great grandpa
has a heart attack in the middle of Christmas dinner. It WILL take a
miracle to save Christmas for the Coopers.
This was a comical
Christmas story in which you have a very large extended family that
just so happens to go through the worst possible combination of
family troubles just shy of calling the police. While things are
going terrible in each of their lives, they are all pretending to be
the happy family, but things come full circle in the end when they
realize family is all they really need... mostly. Olivia Wilde,
Amanda Seyfried, Ed Helms, Alan Arkin and Marisa Tomei also star.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digitally-shot digital High Definition image on the
Blu-ray is about as good as the sitcom style of this production is
going to look, though the anamorphically enhanced DVD also included
is softer than expected. The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 5.1 mix captures the dialogue, jokes and sarcasm well enough,
while the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the DVD is a weaker, less warm
variant that's passable at best. Extras include making of the movie,
'Rags the Dog' featurette, 'Fun on the Set', and music video.
-
Ricky Chiang
