‘Love the Coopers’ review: Not much to love

All happy families may be alike, as Tolstoy said, but the same unhappy family keeps appearing in different movies. Here they are again, keeping secrets, nursing grudges, falling for strangers and learning lessons in “Love the Coopers,” a Christmas-themed comedy-drama directed by Jessie Nelson (“I Am Sam”) from a script by Steven Rogers (“P.S., I Love You”).

Nearly a dozen stars play members of the Cooper clan, who reluctantly gather for Christmas in a generically snowy city. Diane Keaton and John Goodman play Charlotte and Sam, who can’t bear to tell their grown children about their impending divorce. After all, Hank (Ed Helms) has just been laid off and Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) is an easily wounded soul despite her flinty facade. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s sister, Emma (Marisa Tomei), has been arrested for shoplifting by Officer Williams (Anthony Mackie), who has his own problems. We also get a teenager (Timothée Chalamet as Hank’s angsty son) and at least one senior (June Squibb, of “Nebraska,” as doddering Aunt Fishy).

The best of these actors could sell just about any script, but this one presents challenges. The characters speak not in dialogue but in self-help prose (“You love at arm’s length”) and their motivations feel like writerly contrivances. The film’s uneven tone doesn’t help: It wavers between whimsical, snarky and dopey. (Thanks to special effects, characters literally “shatter” and “explode.”) The narration, by Steve Martin, is cornier than Karo syrup.

Things brighten whenever oh-so-liberal Eleanor flirts with right-wing Army hunk Joe (a very good Jake Lacy); theirs is the one relationship worth rooting for. Conversely, the generation-spanning romance between Grandpa Bucky (Alan Arkin, 81) and young waitress Ruby (Amanda Seyfried, 29) is an embarrassment; the movie unwisely plays it for pathos, not laughs.

“Love the Coopers” isn’t exactly loathsome, but it certainly can’t be called endearing. It’s a crazy-quilt of hokey plots embroidered with mawkish platitudes — the movie equivalent of an ugly sweater.