THE REF: There's Nothing Like A Thief To Bring a Family Together
 Ah, Christmas. The most wonderful—and heartburn-inducing—holiday of the year, there is a whole panoply of fine cinematic treasures about the Yuletide season. I’m not talking about heartwarming films like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE or WHITE CHRISTMAS, either; no, we’re talking GREMLINS or NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION or, hee hee, BAD SANTA. But, the one that warms the most cockles in this reviewer’s heart is the 1994 gem THE REF, one of the best examples of a family sort of uniting in the face of incompetent adversity ever put to celluloid.
It’s Christmas in Connecticut, and most of the respectable citizenry is either on vacation somewhere warm or snuggled up inside, celebrating the season. This august company, however, doesn’t include long-married couple Lloyd (Kevin Spacey) and Caroline Chasseur (Judy Davis), who are working on a decade or more of bitter and resentful (but funny) sparring. After burning through yet another marriage counselor, they stop at a grocery store to get ready for Christmas dinner, where Caroline meets up with Gus (Denis Leary), who is having his own brand of hell this Christmas Eve. Gus is a thief, a not-too-shab
The high-octane bickering between Lloyd and Caroline is bad enough for Gus’ nerves (begging the question of why the hell doesn’t he shoot them, since he is packing heat), but when the rest of Lloyd’s family shows up for Christmas, including Lloyd’s satanic mother Rose (Glynis Johns), the violence can’t come soon enough. Meanwhile, the only cop in town with any brains, the local police chief (Raymond J. Barry), has to deal with idiot cops and idiot city council people, which leads to several embarrassing situations, but also one of the funniest lines of the film. And, complicating the mix, Lloyd and Caroline’s wayward son (Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.), who’s merrily blackmailing the headmaster of his military school, is on his way home, threatening to further pooch Gus’ already fragile self-control.
Part of what makes THE REF work so nicely is the acidic script
|
