CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS

I haven’t read the John Grisham novella Skipping Christmas on which this film is based, but several of my friends have and many of them are refusing to see its big-screen adaptation based solely on its trailers and commercials.

They loved the story and are greatly afeared of what the movie holds in store. I can’t vouch for the quality of the book, which pokes fun at the commercialism of the holidays, but I can testify that the film version is crass, hollow and filled with an unbelievable amount of screeeeeeeeeching on the part of its cast.

Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis star as Luther and Nora Krank, a happily married couple living in a suburb where possessing a ridiculous amount of Christmas spirit is ruthlessly enforced by a local resident (Dan Aykroyd) and his collective of obsessive, Santa-loving neighbors. For these folks, slapping an obscene amount of decorations on their homes, and embracing every single holiday tradition known to man, is practically the law. So, when the normally enthusiastic Kranks decide to – GASP! HORRORS! SAY IT AIN’T SO! – opt out of the annual festivities in order to travel south instead, pandemonium breaks out and the couple are soon the Scrooge-y scourge of the area. The reason behind their decision: their daughter (Julie Gonzalo) will be out of town, so why bother with the costly celebrations this year? Time for a change. Time for something new. Time to skip Christmas.

From what I understand, the book is a clever satire. The movie, though, can’t seem to decide what exactly it wants to be. A slapstick comedy? A sentimental holiday morality tale? An examination of the absurdity of North American rituals? It’s kind of a sloppy blend of all these things, but fails to be any of them convincingly. The fact that its tone remains loud and obnoxious almost all the way through, until the last fifteen minutes when it suddenly tries to become quiet and heartwarming (?!), only adds to the mess.

Jamie Lee Curtis is thrown into ludicrous pratfall after pratfall after pratfall, and unleashes scream after howl after (as mentioned) screech each time. Her character veers back and forth between housewife, hellion, hurt pigeon and ho-ho-humdrum. I didn’t buy her as a mousy suburbanite, and I didn’t think there was an ounce of chemistry between her and onscreen husband Tim Allen, whose mugging for the camera got very old very quickly. Neither character was particularly likable or memorable, and neither were any of the supporting players…save for Austin Pendleton as a mysterious stranger whose true identity is one of many big disappointments in the movie. And he’s only memorable because audiences spend much of the film trying to figure out who he is, only to endure a major letdown once it’s revealed.

I’m not entirely sure what went wrong. Maybe director Joe Roth should have skewed the proceedings to be more outrageously extreme so that the actions of all those involved venture into the cartoon-ish, over-the-top mode that might have suited the material better. That, or dial everything down three or four notches and play it closer to reality. As it stands, some characters (the daughter, the mystery man) seemed to behave realistically, like normal human beings, while others marched through the action in an entirely manufactured, forced and unfunny way. Again, the atmospheric mish-mash made it hard to pinpoint what kind of story was being told.

Either way, it was a painful hour and forty minutes, where the laughs were few and the eyerolling was plentiful. As far as holiday films go, this one is a big lump of coal in the cinematic stocking.