The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Blu-ray Movie Review

Where's Poppa?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 22, 2013

For his tenth film as writer/director, Ed Burns returned to his roots in The Brothers McMullen and She's the One to portray a subject close to home—literally, because much of the film was shot in his own neighborhood and residences belonging to his extended family. Like the families in Burns's earlier works, the Fitzgeralds are an Irish clan riven by conflicts but unified at their core by bonds that cannot be severed, no matter how furious their battles or ultimate their declarations that they'll never, never, never forgive each other. By explicitly setting the story at Christmas, Burns has picked the occasion when suppressed family conflicts are most likely to come bursting to the surface, but he has also invoked the secret hope for reconciliation that lurks in the third act of every Christmas story since at least Charles Dickens. Burns has said that his favorite Yuletide film is the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life, because Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey has to endure so many hardships before he reaches a happy ending. The Fitzgerald Family Christmas follows the same blueprint.

Magnolia Home Entertainment has provided two versions of The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (hereafter "FFC") on a single Blu-ray disc. Both were released to theaters, but one cut carries a PG-13 rating and runs 97 minutes, while the other is unrated and runs about five minutes longer. Each cut is included separately and in its entirety, but Burns has recorded a commentary only for the unrated version, which indicates his preference. The major differences between the two cuts are the language, which is far too explicit in the unrated version for what the MPAA thinks younger audiences should hear, and more graphic sexual material in various subplots, though nothing that wouldn't survive in an R rating. One suspects that the longer cut was released "unrated" simply to save the effort of a second submission to the MPAA and possibly as a promotional tool, in the hope that the "unrated" monicker might provoke additional interest. In any case, it's the superior cut.

The central issue for the Fitzgerald family of Gibson, Long Island (which was also home to the McMullen Brothers) is the fact that the family patriarch, "Big Jim" Fitzgerald (Ed Lauter), walked out on his family twenty years ago, leaving a wife, Rosie (Anita Gillette), and seven kids. The details are sketchy, but Big Jim's company (of an unspecified nature) was bought by a conglomerate. With his new-found wealth, he chose to start a new life with a new wife, and he let the old one slip away. Now, beaten down by business reversals, suffering from ill health and filled with regret, Big Jim knows that he cannot go backward, but he wants to spend Christmas with his family.

The task of engineering this feat of diplomatic legerdemain falls to Gerry Fitzgerald (Burns), the eldest of Big Jim's children. Gerry has acted as head of the family ever since his father's departure, taking over the management of his grandfather's tavern (named, of course, "Fitzgerald's") instead of pursuing his own ambitions, and looking after Rosie as each of his younger siblings—four sisters and two brothers—pursues his or her own directions (or tries to). Today, December 23, is Rosie's birthday, and Gerry is trying to organize a party at her house, where they all grew up, so that the family can discuss Big Jim's request. Rosie will be unalterably opposed, having told her husband when he left that she would never allow him to return. The younger children will agree, because they deeply resent being abandoned by their father, especially the youngest, Cyril (Tom Guiry), who has just been released from rehab after a serious history of drug and alcohol abuse. Gerry clearly hopes that he and some of his older siblings will be able to bring the others around. At least he can tell his father that he tried.

But none of Rosie's children want to gather at her home two days before they are already scheduled to assemble there for Christmas. The prospect of surviving one day in the company of this fractious mob is hard enough, but two in the same week? All of the Fitzgerald clan have too many bad memories of their life in that house to contemplate the prospect of returning with anything less than dread. Even Cyril looks less than thrilled when he gets home. None of them has emerged unscathed from their parents' breakup and the years of bitterness that followed. The second oldest, Quinn (Mike McGlone, playing brother to Burns for the third time), has refused to settle down for as long as possible, while the women he dates keep getting younger than him. He wants to spend the weekend with the latest one, Abbie (Daniella Pineda), to whom he plans to propose, not because he's in love, but because he feels his own version of the biological clock ticking.

As for the Fitzgerald sisters, the three with husbands have marital problems. The oldest, Dottie (Marsha Dietlein), has just split from her spouse so that she can have an affair with a much younger man. Connie (Caitlin FitzGerald) is married to a drinker who can't get a job and is physically abusive. Erin (Heather Burns, no relations to Ed) is dealing with the stresses of a new baby and the pressure of having her husband's family request their presence at Christmas (which is ironic, since the family is Jewish). And the youngest, Sharon (Kerry Bishé), is dating a much older man, Francis Xavier or "FX" (Noah Emmerich), who wants to take her away for the weekend. She knows she's a cliché (dating older men = daddy issues), but she doesn't care.

As Burns and his editor cross-cut among the various Fitzgeralds while the clock counts down to Christmas Day, Burns deploys a few simple narrative devices to bring the siblings together. Quinn and Abbie end up spending a few days with Sharon and "FX" at his family's home in the Hamptons, where Quinn gets to see himself from a whole new perspective, as he watches his little sister play the tender young thing on an older guy's arm. There's a comical subplot about whether Erin's baby should be baptized, something that Grandma Rosie desperately wants but Erin adamantly opposes, because she doesn't want to offend her Jewish husband. The upshot is a wonderful scene between Rosie and her long-time priest, Father Mike, played by Malachy McCourt (who was Mike McGlone's driver in The Brothers McMullen). Father Mike asks Rosie how she can be so concerned with bringing her grandson's soul to Jesus, yet so indifferent to the Savior's message of forgiveness when it comes to her former husband. Rosie's answer is priceless.

Burns's riskiest move is to give Gerry a potential love interest in the person of Nora (Connie Britten), a Boston native who is the caregiver to Mrs. McGowan (Joyce Van Patten), an old family friend whom Gerry hopes to enlist in convincing his mother. Gerry and Nora hit it off immediately, because they sense in each other (and quickly confirm) that they have much in common. Britten, who shot all her scenes in two days while on a break from filming her TV series Nashville, brings an understated credibility to her exchanges with Burns. Nora and Gerry are old enough and sufficiently chastened by life's reversals to have lost their illusions, but that doesn't mean they've given up hope for happiness. They just know flash from substance.

Mrs. McGowan is too weak to leave her home, but Rosie eventually comes to visit. Joyce Van Patten delivers one of FFC's most memorable speeches when she talk about the contradictory nature of love. Her late husband always made her so angry, she says, but she'd really like to have him back (and not just for sentimental reasons).

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

According to the commentary, The Fitzgerald Family Christmas was shot on the Red Epic; the cinematographer was Burns's long-time collaborator William Rexer. Because the low-budget film was shot in a "run-and-gun" style, with locations grabbed in a hurry and frequently without permits, the lack of time for elaborate setup provided a test of the Red camera's ability to capture clear and detailed image on the fly. The results, as reflected on Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, are impressive. After completion on a digital intermediate, the image is consistently detailed, clean and free of noise, and it also reflects the exceptional depth of field of which the Red is capable. The color palette ranges from ordinary and naturalistic (e.g., the "stolen" shot inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal) to rich and almost poetic (such as Fitzgerald's bar, both inside and out). The film was shot during the 2011 Christmas season in order to take advantage of as much available production value as possible from existing decor, and it shows.

Because the Blu-ray contains two entire versions of the film, for a total running time of over three hours, the bitrate isn't as high as one frequently sees from Magnolia. The average bitrate for both versions is around 24.00 Mbps, with the theatrical unrated version being just slightly lower. Red footage compresses well, and that bitrate is sufficient to ensure that no compression artifacts were in evidence.

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Other than dialogue, which is the crucial component in an Ed Burns film, the key element in the Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is the holiday-themed score by P.T. Walkley, a regular Burns collaborator. As Burns explains on the commentary track, he and Walkley selected seasonal carols that were in the public domain (to save money, obviously). Walkley's piano-heavy film score begins each carol in recognizable form, then veers off in one unexpected direction or another. It's the perfect lowkey complement to the incessant Christmas debates being conducted onscreen by the characters.

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Edward Burns (Unrated Theatrical Edition Only): As he usually does in his commentaries, Burns focuses on the mechanics of low-budget filmmaking, even to the point of repetition, but there are useful insights and interesting facts to be learned. He talks at length about the ensemble of actors and crew that he has assembled over the years, and the various ways in which it keeps expanding (often because somebody who is already in the group knows someone else who is talented). Burns also talks about writing the script and reveals that it was Tyler Perry who, during the shooting of Alex Cross, encouraged him to return to the territory of The Brothers McMullen and She's the One .



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Drinking Buddies, Good Ol' Freda, I Give It a Year and Prince Avalanche, as well as a promo for AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back later for updates".

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Frank Capra has nothing to worry about, but FFC is a surprisingly solid Christmas movie, with an interesting story, affecting performances and a genuine message about hope and forgiveness. Magnolia has provided its usual creditable package and offered those with younger children the option of a PG-13 version. Maybe other extras were sacrificed to free up the digital real estate, but the two-in-one approach has the advantage of expanding the disc's potential audience. Highly recommended.