Review of The Ref (1994) by Alaine B — 16 Dec 2010

"The Ref" is one of my favorite Christmas movies, it stars Denis Leary as a cat burglar who unwittingly takes bickering couple Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis hostage and ultimately ends up having to meet with the entire, annoying family for Christmas dinner.

As the feuding spouses, Spacey and Davis are perfect. They have a corrosive chemistry together and feed off of their character's biting, ill-spirited, hilarious put-downs and rantings. Denis Leary is also crudely effective as the titular character, tortured by the couple's incessant fighting. The family dinner is another laugh riot, with the actors hitting all the right chords as the stereotypically irritating, obligated-to-visit relatives who have an equally uneven family.

Besides the family hostage story, there are also several other stories that run throughout the movie involving blackmail and a disgruntled neighborhood Santa Claus. Director Ted Demme balances all these storylines, albeit sometimes not very developed ones, and juggles them adequately with the main act.

Ted Demme's direction is also controlled and never lets up, sticking to the scripts incisive arguments and family-haranguing and not reducing this smart, sometimes dark comedy to a typical, brainless holiday flick. The only time he falters is with the ending, of which the last minute could have been cut. Otherwise, this is a very funny, stinging, and unusual Christmas movie that gets more laughs than most Hollywood-packaged, uninspired crowd-pleasers.