Christmas with the Kranks
Review by Jason Donner
Every year, it seems, some big shot Hollywood studio comes along to
shove what they see as the true spirit of Christmas down our throats
in the form of a really bad movie. I thought we'd gotten our annual
dose of this nonsense in the form of the immensely stupid Surviving
Christmas... but like any good malady, this cancer is back for a
relapse with the even stupider and even more insipid Christmas
with the Kranks.
The story
behind this piece of holiday hogwash is that the Kranks are suffering
a serious case of empty nest syndrome when their only daughter joins
the Peace Corps and spends her first Christmas away from home. The
Kranks come to the realization that they'll save a lot of money if
they just go on a tropical cruise and skip Christmas all together, so
they say "Bah humbug!" to the holiday and, in turn, piss off everyone
around them.
Through a series of slapstick situations and mind-numbing stupid
situations, they alienate the Christmas loving neighborhood that they
live in and eventually learn that there is a reason to celebrate
Christmas every year... and that reason is, apparently, to conform
with your forceful jackass neighbors.
It's amazing just how truly terrible this movie turned out. There's
not a single laugh to be found it in. Not one! As a matter of fact, I
would say that this is one of the most unintentionally mean-spirited
and cynical Christmas movies I've ever seen.
Even my eternal love of Jaime Lee Curtis cannot protect her from my
wrath this time around. She's awful in this movie as both she and Tim
Allen continually embarrass themselves over and over and over again by
doing cheap and stupid slapstick all in the name of some comedy that
doesn't exist and some silly artificial and completely wrong idea of
what Christmas truly means. They even look embarrassed to be in this
movie at times... almost as if what they really want for Christmas is
a new agent.
This movie is just so bad. Even though The Kranks are supposed to be
the misguided Ebenezer Scrooges of the story, I continually felt sorry
for them in their Gestapo neighborhood full of yuletide bullies and
holiday harassers. What the hell is it with this movie that Chris
Columbus didn't see that the neighbors he wrote are such jackasses?
What's the message of this movie? Forget individualism? Follow the
masses? It's selfish to do something for yourselves? It's Christmas
communism, I tells ya!
Christmas With the Kranks goes from bad to worse as it decays
into the clichéd heartwarming goop that it purports to be protecting
us in the first place. This movie is terrible, it's awful, and I feel
like burning a Christmas tree in my front yard and getting brain
damage from the fumes just so I can forget the awfulness that this
movie has defecated into my life.