Christmas With the Kranks Review
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, Rovi
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