.@melissa_keir: Like the Coopers... not Love them. #moviereview

​This holiday tale is sure to pull at your heart, but this movie was better suited for the Hallmark Channel than the box office. I’m giving it a C+.

​Love the Coopers is a tale of a dysfunctional family who come together to celebrate Christmas. There’s the grandfather who is half in love with a waitress half his age. The two sisters who still hold grudges about which one was better. The old married couple who are on the verge of a divorce because they forgot what love was. The youngest daughter who’s been hiding her heart from life and brings home a complete stranger in order to save face with her family. Basically, it plays out like a Nicolas Sparks book.

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​Throughout the movie there are laugh out loud moments from jokes about dog farts to that awkward teenage first kiss. These moments are beacons in this family’s dysfunction. Seriously, if you think you have a family with problems, spend the day with the Coopers. I don’t think any of them are capable of telling the truth, maybe Aunt Fishy but she’s senile.

With the sheer star-power of the actors in this movie (Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Diane Keaton, even Steve Martin), I would have thought it would have been a record setter at the box office. However, the storyline is predicable. It plays to all the holiday crises and norms yet the story ends with a happily ever after for the whole family. So you’ll leave the theater entertained and feeling good about the holidays and your own family. Now there’s no need to spike the turkey with uppers!

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