“So nice to meet you!”

From Downhill.

While taking a once-in-a-lifetime family vacation in Austria, things go very wrong for one unsuspecting couple.  While enjoying skiing on the mountains in perfect conditions, husband and wife Pete (Will Ferrell) and Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) along with their kids, Emerson (Ammon Ford) and Finn (Julian Grey), are enjoying their gorgeous hotel with the help of the boundary-ignoring hotel manager, Charlotte (Miranda Otto).  However, while enjoying lunch at an outdoor restaurant, a planned blast creates a small but controlled avalanche that ends close to the restaurant; while Billie stayed and held the boys, Pete grabbed his phone and ran, creating major tension for the whole family.  Billie is understandably shaken after the event, but Pete just wants to move on without discussing it and get back to enjoying their vacation.  In an attempt to get the family vacation back on track for fun, Pete invites his world-traveling coworker, Zach (Zach Woods) and his girlfriend Rosie (Zoë Chao) to join them for a day at the resort, but Billie connects with Rosie over the severity of the trauma the controlled blast created.  Pete insists he did not abandon his family, while Billie finds support from almost everyone guest or resort staff member (including Giulio Berruti) that they meet.  As the vacation drags on, it very obviously changes from a fun family experience to a disastrous silent fight between the married couple that will have be resolved before the fast-approaching vacation end or taken home with them to America.

While Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus bring a subtle, dry comedy to the movie, as a whole the movie is pretty far from being a comedy or a romance.  This movie seems to really struggle with what it wants to be, which makes it incredibly hard for the viewer to connect with either the emotions of the characters or the tone of the film.  Downhill has a few funny moments and comes to a fairly satisfactory ending, but it seems to miss the mark, especially for its Valentine’s Day theatrical release date.

| Rated: R | Running Time: 86 minutes |Genre: drama/comedy|

||Family Viewing||Cursing: 4* of 10|Nudity: 0 of 10|Sexuality: 1 of 10|Gore: 0 of 10

|AVAILABLE FOR HOME VIEWING|