Metacritic reviews

Home for the Holidays strikes such a perfect note that it's hard at first to realize what an impressive balancing act it is.

Foster directs the film with a sure eye for the revealing little natural moment.

Foster keeps the party hopping, although more dark humor would have helped before she winds it down with sentiment and bromides.

Foster has whipped the actors into the sort of comic frenzy usually reserved for farce, and the ready-for-anything energy serves the material well.

Ms. Foster and the screenwriter, W. D. Richter, have given this film some peculiar mood swings, so that it starts out zanily and winds down to a wistful note.

There are few surprises on offer here; the comedy is engaging without ever being side-splitting, the dramatic conflict convinces without going overboard, and the denouement, feelgood as it is, can be spotted a long way in the distance.

Overall, the movie stresses the more painful and awkward moments; moments that might be classified as "heartwarming" are rare. This results in a very cynical tone and I suspect that was not the desired effect.

Foster's film offers its fair share of laughs, although most come at the expense of "easy mark" characters. Dramatically, however, the movie is only a step up from a flop.

Foster, working from a patchy, meandering script by W.D. Richter, produces scene after scene of rudderless banter. The movie is all asides, all nattering; the actors seem lost in their busy, fractious shticks.

The result is a movie that feels both fussed-over and meaninglessly cruel.