Hey folks, Harry here with a very not nice review of CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS. Now - Everyone here at AICN has their favorite whipping boy director. Mine is Paul W.S. Anderson. Quint's is Uwe Boll. Moriarty's is Frank Darabont. And Capone... well Capone whips on Joe Roth. I'm not entirely sure how valid the "dysfunctional Christmas" genre is, but... according to Capone... it ain't worth much. Here ya go...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here with my good deed for the day: warning you against another miserable film about to be ass-dumped into theatres. I would gladly sit through SURVIVING CHRISTMAS seven more times before I'd take another glance at CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS, the miserable adaptation of John Grisham's book "Skipping Christmas."? The film is directed by Joe Roth, who heads Revolution Films and last tortured us as a director with AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS, my most hated film of 2001. The story is simple, but it is complicated by grown adults acting like two-year olds. Perhaps the most shocking thing about KRANKS is that it was adapted by Chris Columbus, who directed the first two HARRY POTTER films. The guy is no saint, but I thought he'd risen above this level of crap.
Tim Allen is Luther Krank, whose grown daughter (Julie Gonzalo) has joined the Peace Corps and won't be home for Christmas this year. After looking over their expenditures for the previous year's Christmas, Luther decides that he and his wife Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) should skip the holiday altogether and go on a week-long Caribbean cruise. This decision doesn't sit well with the neighborhood, which makes a big to-do each holiday season. The Kranks are systematically terrorized by their neighbors (who include Dan Aykroyd, Felicity Huffman, Caroline Rhea, Erik Per Sullivan, Tom Poston, and M. Emmet Walsh) to put their lights up, get a tree, contribute of various charities, hold their annual Christmas Eve party, and put an oversized Frosty the Snowman on their roof. The couple must hide out and avoid the neighbors, while preparing for their trip by getting new bathing suits and sun tans. Believe me, Curtis in a bathing suit ain't what it used to be.
Allen seems like he's in another movie. Occasionally we see him mumbling jokes and doing that Tim Allen schtick while chaos of some sort is afoot. Neither Allen nor the chaos struck me as particularly amusing. And at the risk of repeating myself after I (favorably) reviewed the FREAKY FRIDAY remake: what the hell happened to Jamie Lee Curtis? Looking more like a she-male than ever before, Curtis spends the entire film shrieking at the top of her lungs, running around waving her hands in a constant panic, and just generally whining and getting on my fucking nerves. When the Kranks get a Christmas Eve phone call from their daughter that she's changed her mind and is coming home for Christmas that night with a new fiance in tow, the stupidity is kicked into hyperdrive as Allen and Curtis attempt to piece together an extravagant party. Will the previously shunned neighbors give into the spirit of the time and pitch in to help the Kranks? Gee, I wonder.
There's really no other way to say it: I hated this movie. Every sinewy fiber of my body hated this movie. Every active and inactive brain cell in my head hated this movie. I hated it so much, I want this movie's children and grandchildren murdered for sport. Prints of this film should be loaded into skeet launchers and shot high into the air where angry hunters can plug them full of holes. I don't care how much of a Tim Allen or Jamie Lee Curtis fan you were or think you are, this film will make you despise them from this point forward. Now, get it away from me. It sickens me even to think about it. And the only reason I'm telling you that it opens on November 24 is so you know exactly when to start avoiding it actively. Amen.
Capone
