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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
"Heartwarming" fare in which a family that tries to bail out of the holidays learns that Christmas happiness must be purchased.
Nov 24, 2004 | In Joe Roth's "Christmas With the Kranks," Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis play Luther and Nora Krank, a suburban Chicago couple who, having just seen their daughter off for a stint in the Peace Corps, decide to forgo Christmas for a Caribbean vacation. By cutting presents, parties and tacky decorations out of their lives for one season, they stand a good chance of enjoying their holiday -- and possibly reconnecting with its true meaning -- instead of being stressed to the breaking point. And even after they make their customary holiday donations to children's charities and their church, they'll still save about three grand over what they normally spend during the holiday season.
Such downright un-American, anti-Christian sentiment mustn't be tolerated. And in "Christmas With the Kranks," it isn't. Adapted by hellspawn Chris Columbus from John Grisham's "Skipping Christmas," "Christmas With the Kranks" purports to kindle the warm glow of love for humankind in our hearts but reaffirms that the trappings of the holiday season are all that really matter. Conformity, signified by your willingness to wear dangly mini Christmas ornaments as earrings or to prop a light-up snowman on your roof so your house will match those of the neighbors, marks you as a good person.
Obviously, being a Jew or Muslim automatically means you're the odd man out. What a fine message "Christmas With the Kranks" sends to us all in this time of healing!
The laughs come fast and furious in "Christmas With the Kranks," beginning with Luther's being splashed by a big vehicle driving through a puddle during a late-November rainstorm. Later, more hilarity ensues when Nora, in anticipation of her sunny holiday, visits a tanning booth and the camera lingers snickeringly on her soft, pale, middle-aged bikini-clad body. The neighbors, who disapprove strongly of the Kranks' decision to opt out of the most sacred and costliest holiday of the year, circle their house with torches (OK, they're really just howling Christmas carols, but it's pretty much the same thing). So Luther, annoyed by their rosy cheeks and good cheer and feeling increasingly defensive about the decision he's made, sprays his walkway with water from the garden hose, which -- get this -- causes interlopers to slip on the icy surface and fall down.
In the end, the Kranks realize how wrong they were and learn that Christmas happiness not only can be bought -- but must be bought, or your family, friends and neighbors will hate you. They recognize how wrong they were to even contemplate spending their holiday in a way that would please them, as opposed to offending their community's sense of how things should be done. "Christmas With the Kranks" even has the audacity to play the old C card: One of the movie's peripheral characters has cancer and, as one tearful neighbor announces, may not live to see another holiday season.
