Christmas With The Kranks | ||||
Joe Roth Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd, M. Emmet Walsh, Elizabeth Franz, Erik Per Sullivan, Cheech Marin, Jake Busey, Austin Pendleton, Tom Poston, Julie Gonzalo, Caroline Rhea, Felicity Huffman 2004 |
If it's Christmas, the coal in our stocking is another third-rate film featuring the bland, limited comic talents of Tim Allen and a theme geared to the holiday season. "Christmas With the Kranks" falls right into line with its predecessors such as "The Santa Clause" and "The Santa Clause 2," except for its odd source material: "Skipping Christmas," a Yuletide book by best-selling author John Grisham. His usual milieu, the courtroom thriller, is eschewed, although nothing could prepare anyone for the movie's mix of cynicism and treacle masquerading as a warm family comedy. (There's not a lawyer in sight, unless a viewer hires one to sue the studio for pain and suffering.) Allen is Scrooging it up as Luther Krank, a guy in the 'burbs who's fed up with Christmas. When his daughter leaves for a stint in the Peace Corps and won't be back before spring, Luther convinces his wife, played with no shame by Jamie Lee Curtis, to skip the holiday and join him on a tropical cruise. Their Christmas-crazy neighbors, led by the block's head honcho (Dan Aykroyd, cashing a paycheck), treat them like traitors. Then, the Kranks must beg the neighbors for help in salvaging the holiday when Peace Corps Cutie decides to bring her new beau home to meet the folks on December 24th. Everyone strains mightily for laughs with bad quips, worse mugging and tiresome slapstick and fails to get the tiniest of chortles. "The Kranks" yanks it. | |||
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