Tim Allen has starred in four Christmas films throughout his career. I've seen all of them. This isn't even the worst one.
Shit Christmas
The Partially Educated Review
In 50 Words or Less: Conform or die! That is the moral of this film. Don't watch it is the moral of this review.
In Detail: The first thing that may throw you with Christmas With The Kranks is the opening credits, namely the bit that says that this is based on a novel by John Grisham. Yet there's not a taut legal proceeding anywhere to be seen. Instead, we've got Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple who decide to forego Christmas, rather than face the prospect of spending it without their daughter. If this was a normal scenario, everyone would ignore them and allow them to continue with this plan as they wish. I'd have been a lot happier if this was the case. Instead, we get Dan Aykroyd leading the sort of villagers that you'd usually expect as a precursor to a load of teenagers getting slaughtered. Aykroyd doesn't like the idea of a gap in his street's festive displays and so he sets out to force Christmas upon the Kranks. God forbid if a Goldstein or Patel family move in.
But this is not a film that wants to dwell on the possibility that Christmas may not be celebrated in some households. Instead, it wants to bring us all in to a sheltered existence in which Christmas is the only thing that matters and what better way to do that than accepting your own cult-like neighbourhood and discovering the importance of community.
Not that one.
Christmas With The Kranks has a message that it thinks is heartwarming, but it's horribly misguided, instead demonstrating a conform or die attitude, as though it's making a B-line for Kim Jong-un's DVD collection. It also has a dearth of laughs and an inability to decide whether it's characters are grounded in normality or nestling into the bosom of insanity. Particularly in the case of Allen, whose occasional rationality is offset by the sort of erratic behaviour that would suggest a bipolar diagnosis is on the way. At one point, skipping Christmas will save them money. At the next point…
Curtis doesn't fare a whole lot better, as she can't decide whether she's on board with the idea or not; a rational thought process, but it doesn't give you anything to enjoy, just excited shrieks followed by nervous panic. Then, the film really shows it's ineptitude with a final character twist that ranks on the idiotic scale somewhere between Dude, Where's My Car? and any combination of words leaving the mouth of Donald Trump.
If that's not enough to put you off, then bear this in mind. My boss likes this film. She also thinks The Muppet Christmas Carol is rubbish.
THREE out of 10
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