Instead of watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation again this holiday season, make a new annual tradition with its Canadian counterpart, Coopers’ Christmas. A should-be cult classic from Trailer Park Boys director Warren P. Sonoda, it has what the Chevy Chase sequel really lacks: the Lampoon’s anarchic humor and a hard-R rating to match.
Starring real-life spouses and The Daily Show vets Jason Jones (who co-wrote) and Samantha Bee, the film captures one crazy Christmas in 1985, all via a barely used VHS camcorder Gord (Jones) gives to his wife, Nancy (Bee). She’s pissed he spent their Orlando vacation money on it, but their youngest son (Dylan Everett) is so enthused, he tapes most of the day and night, often surreptitiously.
Each family member is royally screwed-up. Big brother Marcus (Nick McKinlay) is Star Wars-obsessed, socially inept and suicidal; teen niece (Hayley Lochner) seems well on her way to a career as a stripper and/or prostitute; and elderly Nana (Jayne Eastwood, 2004’s Dawn of the Dead) is perpetually sour-faced and would rather be dead. Then there’s Uncle Nick (co-scripter Mike Beaver), this film’s Cousin Eddie, as channeled through the Danny McBride blend of obnoxious and inappropriate — mullet included!
Then the real problems start: Gord’s brother, Tim (Ginger Snaps’ Peter Keleghan), arrives. See, rumor has it that Tim may or may have not have slept with Nancy on her and Gord’s wedding night. What is Christmas if not a time for dysfunction?
Known as Coopers’ Camera in its native country, this comedy has plenty of familial instability. It’s refreshingly politically incorrect, raunchy and, to my pleasant surprise, hysterical, as such adjectives don’t necessarily go hand in hand. It’s not all scatological humor, either, although even those instances manage to be funny. For example, when Marcus throws up Pine-Sol on the living room floor after a failed suicide attempt, Gord offers some fatherly advice: Clean it up. “It smells like egg salad and blue spruce.”
Daily Show devotees wanting to see Jones and Bee in action should know both are more than willing to ugly themselves up for a laugh. Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall has a small role, as do his, um, ornaments. To borrow Christmas Vacation’s original tagline, yule crack up. —Rod Lott