If you sketch out the plot at a high level...

...it's hard to image anything but side splitting laughter. It could have put "Vacation" to shame as a road trip movie. It might have rivalled "Broadway Danny Rose" as a messed up life piece with an unforgettable holiday dinner scene. But they decided to try and split the baby with a little too much heavy handed "how to have a relationship with a screwed up extended family". And to make up for that, the actors seemed to amp-up their comedic delivery. I kept thinking over and over this film was designed for a Woody Allen "deadpan" style treatment, rather than cantankerous Robin Williams half-Teddy Roosevelt with cigar in mouth, half-John Keating with out of place vocabulary and delivery.

In some ways, this film approaches Williams' early cinematic work "Moscow on the Hudson", which provided an antic driven laugh track to do with a satirical look at American opportunity and soviet sensibilities. (You could compare the Russian grandpa juggling the toilet paper with the buck-toothed nephew practising his extreme eating skills at the Chirstmas dinner.) But Moscow on the Hudson benefited from an R rating and a healthy dose of 80's sexual references. This film, on the other hand, comes in at a wishy-washy PG-13 rating, with some potty-mouthed-ness but nothing that is going to make your sides split the way they did when you watched Eddy Murphey perform Raw and then when you try to watch any of his more recent comedies you find yourself just not laughing.

So much potential squandered. So many film studies term papers to be written.