This Christmas: Critic Reviews

This Christmas includes more family melodrama than all the holiday-homecoming flicks from the past decade combined.

It's formulaic and corny as hell, but a top-notch cast keep this festive family drama believable - just.

There is a familiar quality to the multi-generational family holiday homecoming that nicely blends drama and comedy. It's a cut above the standard heartwarming fare that fills theaters this time of year.

The movie doesn't idealize, which makes it ideal.

One of those overstaffed, overstuffed 'when do we eat?' holiday dramedies.

The cast has spirit, but the dialogue and situations are phonier than the Yule log on TV.

o matter how silly the situation, each member of the uniformly strong cast creates a nice balance between sentimental and sweet -- which is just how every holiday gathering should feel.

What's surprising is how well Whitmore, the director, manages to direct traffic... It's sort of a screwball-comedy effect, but with a heart.

Overstuffed, formulaic but very easy to take.

This carefully observed film has lots of heart.

At the multiplex where so many holiday movies feel regifted, This Christmas is a gift.

There's so much wrong going on, things start to feel forced.

A rare holiday treat, a package that's both thoughtfully selected and sure to please its intended recipients.

At two full hours it can feel as exhausting as a holiday dinner with your own family.

A warm and warmed-over collection of holiday-movie cliches packaged in a movie about a large extended black family.

If the real-life Christmas experience tends too often to be marred by the rude contradiction between expectations and reality, movies like the ultra-bland holiday family movie This Christmas are at least partly to blame.

An incoherent mess in which scenes of teary reconciliations sit uncomfortably next to protracted gags involving catfights, car wrecks and a big bottle of baby oil.

Animated acting and the sheer chaos of this squabbling family give the film a comic buoyancy.

Easily the best film of its genre since 'Soul Food' and definitely makes for a excellent holiday season treat.

A happy Christmas package that more or less ignores the fact that it's a black American family story