PARTY COOPERS

Opening this weekend:

Love the Coopers—The Coopers, and their extremely First-World problems, being:

Dad (John Goodman) wants to leave mom (Diane Keaton) because he’s sick of her putting the concerns of their grown kids ahead of their own relationship. She’s talked him into sticking around for one more picturesque family Christmas in their handsome suburban Pittsburgh home.

Meanwhile, Gramps (Alan Arkin) has bonded with a young diner waitress (Amanda Seyfried) and now she’s planning to move away. Son (Ed Helms) has lost his job, and is hiding it from his family. Daughter (Olivia Wilde), dawdling in the Pittsburgh airport, meets a handsome young solider (Jake Lacy) on his way to deployment and talks him into posing as her boyfriend for the holiday in hopes of avoiding the disappointed, disapproving, worried looks of her parents.

Gee, wouldn’t it be something if two of them actually fell in love?

Middle-class whining about what a drag it is to spend time with your family at the holidays is theme which the movies have pretty thoroughly explored over the last few decades. Indeed, Keaton has already starred in a similar ensemble comedy-drama, The Family Stone, back in 2005. She’s one of the executive-producers of Love the Coopers, so she must like this sort of thing, or at least like the sort of money it can make.

Directed by Jessie Nelson from a script by Steven Rogers (which went into production under the better title The Most Wonderful Time), Love the Coopers is slickly produced and more watchable than it really deserves to be. Partly this is thanks to a Starbucks-compilation-CD-style soundtrack of genteel holiday numbers, including Sting’s lovely version of “Soul Cake.” Partly it’s because of the underrated winter beauty of Pittsburgh.

But mostly, as you might guess, it’s because of the ability of that cast to engage, even with fairly blah material. Along with the above, by the way, the ensemble includes June Squibb as a dotty old aunt, and Marisa Tomei and Anthony Mackie as, respectively, Keaton’s shoplifting sister and the cop stuck with taking her in. This promises to become the most interesting strand—Mackie gives his role a little tension and sting, and he and Tomei have a nice rapport—but it peters out without a real payoff.

There’s also narration, but both the (unmistakable) voice of the famous speaker and the identity of the narrator seem meant to be a surprise until the end credits.

SLATE SHOW

Opening this weekend:

Obvious Child—It might be called the anti-Juno. It’s another romcom where the cute quirky young woman finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy, but this time she unhesitatingly decides she wants an abortion, and is upset that she has to wait two weeks, for medical reasons, to get it—on Valentine’s Day, no less.

Said young woman is Donna, played by Jenny Slate, a tiny Saturday Night Live veteran with a pretty, anxiously optimistic face. Donna is a small-potatoes stand-up comic who, sad and very drunk, has an unprotected one-night stand with a nice goyish type (Jake Lacy) and soon realizes she’s in a jam. When they meet again sober, they find they like each other, and would maybe like to be parents someday, but Donna is sure she’s not ready yet.

With reproductive rights under legislative attack in many parts of the country it’s probably well to put a human face on this predicament, and Slate’s sweet face is a good choice. She carries the movie nicely—a friend of mine predicts that this is her star turn before a long career of playing wisecracking roommates and cubicle neighbors—and she gets capable support from the small cast, which includes Richard Kind and Polly Draper as her parents and Gaby Hoffmann as her wisecracking roommate.

Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre, the movie is slight, watchable and somehow not quite satisfying. But it’s honest and believable.

How To Train Your Dragon 2—This sequel to the 2010 animated charmer, adapted from the books by Cressida Cowell, continues the adventure of young human hero Hiccup and his dragon Toothless, who taught the Viking culture of Berk to be dragon trainers instead of dragon-slayers. Now the dragon-loving colony is threatened by a growling warlord who enslaves dragons through his mastery of a gargantuan “Alpha” monster who compels obedience in others of its species.

The appeal of this movie—and it’s extremely appealing—lies in the characterizations, both of the humans and of the dragons, who have endearingly canine personalities. The story takes a sad turn about two-thirds in, but while it’s upsetting, the loss makes sense in the context of a robust adventure story.

HTTYD2 is likely to hold up as one of the best animated films of the year. As far as I’m concerned, in its sunnier way, it’s as visually and thematically extravagant a fantasy as Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies.