Christmas With the Kranks (2004)

The title's silly-name humor is typical of Christmas With the Kranks, the film version of John Grisham's novel Skipping Christmas. The original name would have been better, but it was probably too similar to Surviving Christmas, Ben Affleck's lump of coal that came out the same holiday season. Joe Roth's film of a Chris Columbus script doesn't stoop to those depths, but it does have a consistently hard time capturing real human behavior. Each scene is less believable than the one before it, but at least it starts with a decent idea -- a middle-aged couple decide to redirect their usual holiday resources toward a Christmas cruise, with their daughter occupied in the Peace Corps. The many niggling details involved with avoiding Christmas -- whom to inform, which traditions to skip -- are humorously presented in the early going, as acquaintances react with surprise and frustration that's exaggerated just enough for good farce. But as the neighbors eventually launch a full-scale assault on the historically generous and popular family just because they decide to re-prioritize for one year, things get ridiculous. Then, not only does their daughter fly home at the last minute -- an unthinkable luxury for a Peace Corps volunteer only a month on the job -- but Jamie Lee Curtis and Tim Allen drive themselves and everyone around them bonkers trying to support the ruse that Christmas was always proceeding just as normal. A disappointed daughter hardly seems grounds for such crisis-level behavior. Most problematic is that the film sees Allen as a Scrooge -- a crank, if you will -- simply because he makes the justified and quite contemporary decision to use late-December vacation days for a real vacation. The audience ends up sympathizing with him a lot more than the filmmakers intended. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide