Perfect for Lear. Spacey/Davis almost steal the whole thing
“The Ref” comes tailor-made for Denis Leary and may just be the best of his unfortunately short leading man career. It’s a blunt, profane little Christmas comedy that probably could have worked out better had it actually come out around Christmas rather than in March. As is, it’s easy to love where it goes, and even easier to see how it walked so that other irreverent Christmas comedies (“Bad Santa”) could run.
Leary plays Gus, a well known but, as yet, unidentified burglar hitting houses around a prosperous Connecticut town. A robbery gone wrong puts him face to face with a rottweiler who chews up billiard balls, and that’s the most pleasant living thing he’ll meet during this Christmas Eve night where he’ll do anything to aid in his getaway.
Which includes kidnapping Caroline (Judy Davis) and Lloyd (Kevin Spacey) Chasseur, an unhappily married couple of such venom that Davis and Spacey always threaten to run away with Leary’s star vehicle themselves. The idea that these two are so bad they need to see a marriage counselor on Christmas Eve is the tip of the iceberg. He’s a Mama’s boy whose every attempt to become independent has failed. His failures and subsequent emotional shutdown has affected his wife, who is now bitter and emasculating and having affairs to feel alive. She tells the therapist the story of how she dreams of putting his head on a platter with his penis in his ear. He would just like her to stop telling that story at dinner parties.
It’s a richly drawn and wonderfully acerbic relationship that serves as one of the highlights of the script by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss. The other is how Leary has to fight for supremacy amongst all the bickering. It’s well suited to Leary’s abrasive wit and gritty sarcasm. Trying to make an impact, he brandishes a gun and says, “From now on, the only person who gets to yell is me. Why? Because I have a gun. People with guns get to do whatever they want. Married people without guns - for instance - you - DO NOT get to yell. Why? NO GUNS! No guns, no yelling. See? Simple little equation.”
This all leads to one of the funnier third acts in a Christmas movie since “National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Lloyd’s equally hateful relatives arrive for Christmas dinner, yet knowing Caroline’s cooking, they’ve stopped off to eat on the way over. Caroline has prepared a Scandinavian feast, which is hilariously awful, and the family lets her know it. They’re led by a constantly disapproving matriarch (Glynis Johns), who nonetheless gets her ass kissed because she’s loaded.
To avoid tipping anyone off, Gus masquerades as the couple’s counselor where oddly enough he actually does wind up overseeing an entire family therapy session where Spacey and Davis do some of their best work adding layers to this relationship. It also leads to a back and forth of insults between Leary and Johns which is something I never thought i’d see but am so happy I did.
There are many side characters. Cops are usually bumbling morons in movies like this but are otherwise irrelevant. Gus has a partner who’s also a dummy. The Chasseurs have a son who’s developed into a con artist. He’s currently blackmailing the head of his military school (J.K. Simmons). And what Christmas movie would be complete without a drunken, surly neighborhood Santa? “The Ref” is jolly nastiness tied up in a bow by director Ted Demme (nephew of Jonathan), who died way too young after directing Johnny Depp’s “Blow”. This was one of his best films.