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Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

TBS’ turkey spoils season of giving with stupidity

Granted there’s not a lot of high expectations for a made-for-TV, low-budget, holiday-themed movie, but when “Reunion” manages to fail on the levels of both simply providing one genuine laugh and managing to spend 10 minutes on the holiday mentioned in the title there’s obvious problems.

The set-up for this turkey is that anesthesiologist to the stars, Mitch Snider (Judge Reinhold), is fed-up with being disrespected by his surgeon colleagues and getting frustrated by his family’s lack of togetherness and fbonding time.

Lo and behold, Mitch gets a letter from his long-lost cousin in Idaho. This occurrence inspires Mitch to take his family from the lap of luxury to the backwoods of Idaho for a Thanksgiving reunion.

Upon arrival, the WASP-y Snider family meets the hippie Snider family. Led by Woodrow Snider (Bryan Cranston) — the Idaho branch of the Sniders greet their Cali kinfolk with expressive hugs and glazed-over stares.

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But while Mitch gets his family experience, the rest of his family gets sufficiently freaked out. Jill (Hallie Todd), Mitch’s wife, gets an education in wig making and country loving from Woodrow’s wife, Pauline (Penelope Ann Miller). And Encino-bred Allison (Meghan Ory) is frightened by the counter-culture Twig (Britt Irvin) and her homemade dresses.

But then everything gets turned upside-down. Woodrow reveals he contacted Mitch because he needs a kidney transplant. This leads to an oddly complicated series of twists and turns that really just complicate and confuse what should be a simple comedic romp.

And in the course of all these twists and turns, Mitch begins to despise his newfound family, while the rest of his clan buys into their cousins’ ways. And while every character seemingly changes personalities in the last half-hour, there’s more action in the finale than a summer blockbuster.

There’s grand theft auto, an attempt at extortion, a biker rally with a fight, a car chase and a near-death of one of the characters. Just a reminder, this is a comedy.

Despite every piece of drama, “Reunion” still wraps up in a happy little package and only in the last five minutes is there any kind of correlation with the Thanksgiving holiday as the combined, twisted Snider clan feasts together.

Not until the end of all this can there be any appreciation for how much of a train wreck “Reunion” is. All of the major actors in the movie are cast against type. Cranston is so watchable on “Malcolm in the Middle” because underneath his quiet, reserved core there’s an obvious free spirit looking to emerge. Unfortunately, he’s nothing but a free spirit here. Every other word from Cranston is “dude” or “scope this out” and it all just feels so forced.

And Reinhold has the duty of playing the straight man with as much blandness as a $2 turkey. Reinhold, as seen in “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Seinfeld’s” close-talker, is best with some kind of tic. But here he just accepts his abuse.

If there were any humor in “Reunion” this could be forgivable, but there’s no effective humor at all. Any shot at comedy is extremely over-blown and is played much too obviously. The majority of the humor gets based around flatulence and sex, including elderly sex. There just isn’t a redeeming factor in the movie.

“National Lampoon” already nailed the holiday reunion theme beautifully with their “Christmas,” as the focus was on the holiday, the interaction between the insanely mismatched families and just a lot more honest and genuinely funny humor. And Thanksgiving reunions have been handled with Jodie Foster’s dark “Home for the Holidays.”

But there are so many wasted ideas, useless developments and misused actors that drag “Reunion” below even basement-low expectations. Skip these two hours and spend some more time with your family.

Grade: F,”Matthew T. Olson”