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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Family > Holiday > Love The Coopers (2015/Lionsgate Blu-ray w/DVD)

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


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