Movie Review: Four Christmases

by Chet Isikoff, originally published in Entertainment Weekly

This is my agent's idea. Movie Reviews. A way to get my name out there, he says. He says Harper's doesn't cut it. No one reads it, he says. "Ditto" The New Yorker, his word. I'm a populist, he tells me, Sylvester, my agent. He says, let the people hear your voice. Entertainment Weekly. Movie Reviews. That's what people read, he says. It will be good for me. So I agreed. For me, it's a way to earn some extra scratch. Make sure the bourbon stream stays steady.

Thursday. Stop by Sylvester's to pick up the ticket for my first assignment: Four Christmases. Never heard of it. Don't care to, either. Just going to sit back in the theater, let the images wash over me, sip bourbon from my flask and hope it all makes some sort of sense, I decide.

Turns out the ticket is for a show that night. 10:15. It's 9:00. I hurry back to the Nightingale Hotel, my home, 813, to grab my flask. Half-empty. I refill it until it overflows. I lick the face of the flask, screw the cap and put it in my inside pocket. I walk fast to the theater.

9:30. Not sure why I hurried. I stand outside and smoke a cigarillo to kill time. Caramelos, the cigarillos are called. A hint of caramel sweetness. I get them cheap from my Argentinian neighbor. I don't ask where he gets them, the Caramelos. Just toss a Lincoln his way every week and they show up on my door step.

I read the poster for the movie I am not so eager to see. Four Christmases, it says. Vince Vaughn. Reese Witherspoon. The names mean nothing to me. It's 9:45.

Angela. That's a name that means a lot to me. Too much. And I see the body it belongs to coming up the walk confidently. Her walk. Unforgettable. She's wearing a cocktail dress in the dead of winter and couldn't look any warmer. Her high heels crush ice. She sees me and sees that I see her and comes up to me, close.

"Chet, baby," she says. "Let's go."
"I'm on assignment, darling," I say, and immediately regret our familiarity.
"What kind of assignment?"
"Movie review. 10:15 show."
"Plenty of time," she says, and swings her purse up onto her shoulder and walks away. It's 9:55. Of course I follow.

I convince her my place would be better. We're sitting in room 813 of the Nightingale, on my bed. She's smoking one of my Caramelos and twirling it with her index and middle fingers. Her other hand holds her head, propped up on her elbow, facing me. She stares at me deeply. She says, "Chet, baby. Let's spend Christmas together." She starts to drift. Each blink longer than the previous one. The Caramelo teetering between her fingers. About to drop and burn a hole in her slightly fuzzy thigh. Christmas. Never thought I'd celebrate it again. Especially not with Angela.

"Get out," I say, waking her up. "Get out now." I raise my voice. I rear my arms back and shove her to the very edge of the bed.
"Chet, baby," she says. She's confused and, frankly, so am I. I bend my knee and kick her in the stomach. She lets out a sharp groan, like all the air in her body has escaped in a split second, and tumbles to the floor.
"I'm the only one who sleeps in this bed, Angela. Now goddammit, get out," I say, sitting on the edge of the bed now, looking down at her. She's still wheezing, trying to stand. "Get out, dammit, Angela." I grab her purse from my nightstand and throw it at the door. It explodes in a cloud of knick knacks and drops to the hardwood. She's crying, trying to collect her things and shovel them into her injured purse.
"Dammit, Chet. Goddammit, Chet. I just wanted Christmas," she says. She gathers her purse in both arms and stands. "Chet, baby," she says through tears, and opens the door and runs out and slams the door.

I get up and scratch myself. My head, my stomach, my back. I take a shot of bourbon and rub the stubble on my throat. I see one item from her purse she failed to retrieve, lonely on my floor. A small wallet-sized. I pick it up. Our son. A '98 written on the back, his high school graduation year and the last year either of us saw him. I take out my movie ticket and place it on Tony's smiling face. Four Christmases. Four too many, if you ask me. 10:15. It's 10:30 now. I rub the ticket and the photograph together with my thumbs and index fingers. My hands twist and turn and I let the confetti fall to the floor.

That's a movie-going experience for you, folks. It isn't the kind you find in the cold, corporate comfort of a darkened movie theater. It's that of the cold, darkened recesses of the mind, the comfort that can be taken and savored amidst the destruction of one's own life. And I give it three and a half stars.