Okay,sure, it's a movie review in the NY Times, but tell me we haven't jumped the intellectual shark describing Four Christmases with a poem by, well, you'll see...

To an unusual and welcome degree, "Four Christmases" makes merry with an impressive range of modern American social awfulness. In its view of the discomfort that persists between parents and their grown-up children, it flirts with the misanthropy encapsulated in Philip Larkin's poem "This Be the Verse," which begins with an unprintable axiom and concludes with the advice to "get out as early as you can/and don’t have any kids yourself."


I find strange, neurotic, near misanthropic at times Larkin as fascinating as anyone with a BA in literature. I'm not sure this is the right genre or movie for the reference. Poor A.O. Scott would obviously prefer to be doing something else with A.O. Scott's time.

EDIT: From wikipedia:

Scott attended public schools in Providence, Rhode Island—including Classical High School—before graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in 1988 with a degree in literature.
...
Before joining The Times, Scott served as book critic for Newsday, and also as a contributor for the The New York Review of Books and Slate.
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Scott is currently working on a book of literary criticism about the 20th Century American novel.


Poor guy. Guess you can't turn down an offer from the Times, no matter what it is you'll end up writing, huh?

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