by John P. Meyer

He may be home from Iraq, but some world-class sniping of the verbal variety lets Jesse know he hasn't actually left the war zone.

Director Alfredo De Villa's entry in the feel-good holiday movie race has a bit more substance than that other Christmas-themed film now playing - but it's actually less coherent, if such can be imagined.

The storytelling approach of Nothing Like the Holidays is messy and cluttered, just like the lives of the Rodriguez family who gather at Christmas in the suburban Chicago home of the Rodriguez parents, Edy (Alfred Molina) and Anna (Elizabeth Pena).

Alison Swan and Rick Najera's screenplay makes much of the Puerto Rican/Catholic tendency toward big families - the cast of players around the Rodriguez holiday tree is a large one, and the scripters seem concerned about giving us a lot of information about what each and every one of them is (and has been) up to.

Mauricio may have had too much stuffing

The thematic glue holding these numerous episodic storylines together centers on the rocky relationship of Edy and Anna, veterans of marital vicissitudes on both sides of the bliss/conflict divide. As the family comes together at Christmas, Edy is receiving surreptitious phone messages from a woman whom he leaves the holiday table to converse with - much to the consternation of Anna.

A secondary story involves Edy and Anna's youngest son Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez, who also exec. produced), recently returned from active duty in Iraq. He arrives home from the airport - having been picked up by cousin Johnny (Luis Guzman) and best bud Ozzy (Jay Hernandez) - with scars both physical and psychic, which will variously heal and fester over the course of his homecoming weekend.

Edy (Alfred Molina, r.) has a secret. And Sarah (Debra Messing, c.) is helping him keep it. Against her better judgment.

Also in the mix is eldest son Mauricio (John Leguizamo) and his trophy Anglo business executive wife Sarah (Debra Messing, whose character also serves as the token Jew in the crew). This couple is experiencing angst over their decision (advocated with particular vigor by Sarah) to postpone getting pregnant, which puts them at odds with Mauricio's mom.

Then there's comely middle daughter Roxanna (played saucily by the comely Vanessa Ferlito), who has gone off to Hollywood to become a star - and has ended up hanging on every phone call for word from her agent that she's been granted a two-bit part in a two-bit TV pilot.

Not to mention all the characters tangentially related to the family members, such as Marissa (Melonie Diaz), Jesse's estranged girlfriend for whom he still carries a torch; ex-con and neighborhood street tough Alexis (Manny Perez), with whom Ozzy has a particularly personal (and deadly) connection; and Dr. Susan Lee (Cheryl Hamada), the mystery woman behind the secretive phone calls that Edy has been taking in private.

Parranda time

Mix in the denizens of the local bodega run by Edy, simmer the entire motley contingent in the crucibles of both a local nightclub and a neighborhood church (towards which everyone parrandas for Christmas Eve mass) and you'll begin to get a feel for the level of complexity bitten off by the filmmakers.

Taken strictly as a fly-on-the-wall insider view of what Latino family life might be like in urbanized middle America, this is probably a pretty accurate portrayal; in fact, anyone who's part of a large family composed of diverse (and often adversarial) characters could easily relate to the interpersonal conflicts and manufactured melodrama that are as much a part of intimate holiday get-togethers as bad gifting and too much good food.

There are moments of real insight embedded in this uneven, not particularly funny, not really as melancholy as it ought to be grab bag of a movie (the all-male cigar-smokers gathering around the snowy barbecue grill; the drunken chain saw follies; the gunpoint confrontation where Past and Future hover in mute anticipation of a young man's life-and-death decision), but these end up adrift on a 99 minute tide of often tedious trivia.