Christmas with the Kranks (2004)

Directed by Joe Roth. Starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, M. Emmet Walsh, Dan Aykroyd, Julie Gonzalo, Cheech Marin, Jake Busey, Kevin Chamberlin, Elizabeth Franz, Austin Pendleton, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Erik Per Sullivan, Joe Guzaldo, Felicity Huffman. [PG]

With their daughter away for the holidays serving with the Peace Corps, suburbanites Allen and Curtis decide to forgo a flashy Christmas celebration this year and put the money towards a Caribbean cruise—a perfectly reasonable thing to do that’s no one’s business but their own, right? But what should have been a (pointless) five-minute short film gets stretched out to feature length when all of their deranged, impudent neighbors and friends harass them relentlessly about their decision—how dare they skip Christmas!? Abhorrent, hateful holiday comedy with a lousy message of conformity and lousier filmmaking instincts in blowing up every coarse, obnoxious moment like it’s the punchline or pratfall that’s going to sell the trailer. Dumb and mean-spirited, the so-called jokes land with a heavy thud left and right—someone couldn’t try to write gags that are this bad—and some of them seem designed just to make the characters look psychotic. An ill-considered insertion of pathos through a cancer diagnosis and a late-game subplot involving a burglar do nothing besides pad out this wretched thing. The cast deserves better, but one presumes they saw a script before signing on, so…karma? Based, believe it or not, off a book by John Grisham (“Skipping Christmas”).

4/100