The Fitzgerald Family Christmas (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I hope your Christmas went well, but for those of us for whom the holidays prove to be an ordeal, writer-director-actor Edward Burns does a public service with THE FITZGERALD FAMILY CHRISTMAS. Whatever we went through pales in comparison to this ensemble.

Burns, of course, rose to prominence with THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN, a rare case of a crossover art-house sleeper. Here Burns makes another trip to the well of working-class NYC Irish-American family dynamics and dysfunction (same thing, sometimes), plainly directed, and heavy on the ethnic flavor.