Christmas With the Kranks

Christmas With the Kranks (Director: Joe Roth)

Roth's duties in the film world are mostly as a producer. He's produced over 40 features including this year's The Forgotten. He has directed before; the most recognizable of the lot are America's Sweethearts and then Revenge of the Nerds II and Coupe de Ville. Chris Columbus of Home Alone and Harry Potter wrote the screenplay, based on John Grisham's novel Skipping Christmas. This film opens November 24.

Why it just wasn't called Skipping Christmas is beyond me, perhaps there was something aesthetically displeasing about "skipping" Christmas that the head honchos thought might turn customers away, but a good drinking game is to drink each time the phrase is uttered. This will get you sloppy drunk in no time. I must say I don't understand movies like this. It's advertised as a comedy, but there aren't many jokes, and there's not much of a dramatic pull, so it's hard to put a finger on what exactly you're supposed to be feeling during all of this. Eventually, the film tries to get into a farcical mood, but it never builds any steam towards that end. At times, I felt the movie could have been a dark comedy/thriller believe it or not.

Why so? The movie concerns Luther Krank (Tim Allen) and his wife Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) watching their grown daughter Blair (Julie Gonzalo) join the Peace Corps and leaving the nest. Luther decides, without Blair, that Christmas will be more fun this year if he and Nora take off on a Caribbean cruise and skip Christmas entirely, saving money in the process. This decision is met with much ire around Luther's work and especially the neighborhood, led by Vic Frohmeyer (Dan Aykroyd). The people in the neighborhood do not respect the decision at all, and begin to participate in all kinds of pressure-tactics to get them to change their mind.

This is where I believe the movie could have played up some funny-scary (or is it scary-funny?) situations, and they almost get there with a band of carolers who are swiftly joined by some of the neighborhood, including a zealously singing Frohmeyer, who even at one point change their position from the front door to a side window. Instead, we are supposed to laugh at this band of stalkers, and other situations that scream stalking, like incessant phone calls and doorstep pleas to "Free Frosty!" in the hopes that the Kranks will display their snowman. It's not funny-scary, it's just scary, and it's supposed to be funny, and this is where the movie fails.

Slipping further into failure is how Blair decides she's coming back for Christmas with a fiance in tow, and how the Kranks decide they need to reverse their decision, and how the jilted neighborhood decides to pitch in and help them out. This is where the movie just plain sucks. This is where Luther still doesn't feel the Christmas spirit, and then his wife Nora scolds him, and then we're supposed to believe that he's going to regain his Christmas spirit just like that (with the help of carefully placed, just-happened-to-be-there characters to spur it on).

Movies like this are just plain bad, and it reeks of studio assembly line production, an easy holiday buck no matter the focus. This could have been a classic with the right people involved, but you have to stretch the effort here to imagine a classic coming from the job done.