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Christmas with the Kranks
A couple decide to give Christmas a miss because their daughter is away, then have to hastily arrange celebrations when it turns out she can make it after all. Comedy starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd
Although clearly designed as a vehicle for Tim Allen, the Santa Clause star's failures outside of animated movies mean that the most interesting thing about Christmas With The Kranks is that it sees Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis co-star almost 20 years on from their first movie together, John Landis's Trading Places. Back then, Aykroyd was a successful 'Saturday Night Live' graduate who'd enjoyed success as both a screenwriter and comic actor, and she was the sexy daughter of Hollywood royalty who'd started to carve out a name for herself in the movie business. Of course, a lot has changed over the last 20 years - Aykroyd now looks like a tubby uncle while Curtis has become Mrs Christopher Guest. A bigger contrast still is the fact that these two fine performers are now reduced to starring in something as awful as Christmas With The Kranks. On the face of it, Christmas With The Kranks would seem to have a few things going for it. Besides three decent stars, the script was adapted from John Grisham's bestseller by Home Alone scribe Chris Columbus. But if the pedigree is at all impressive, the script is anything but. The moronically basic story centres on the Kranks, Luther (Allen) and Nora (Curtis), who decide to give the holidays a miss and spend the winter in the sun as their only child, Blair (Gonzalo), is away and their faith in the festive season is failing. This doesn't go down well with the neighbours - headed up by Aykroyd's Vic Frohmeyer - who've always loved the way the family have embraced Christmas. However, when Blair rings to say she couldn't possibly miss Christmas with her family, her folks have just 12 hours to decorate the house and baste that turkey. A tale so simple it makes Grisham's other novels seem Ellroy-esque in their complexity, Kranks' storyline wouldn't be such a problem were the performances not so horribly hammy. Aykroyd has been mugging for most of his career, so his excesses are attributable to force of habit while both Curtis and Allen pull the sort of faces you'd expect from a gurning contest. Although the supporting cast features talented performers such as M Emmet Walsh, it provides no respite from the sickening sentiment and poorly executed slapstick. Worst still, the film finds Columbus reheating moments from the Home Alone movies (such as using the garden hose to ice-up pavements) that weren't that funny in the first place. And with so much going so wrong around him, one can only assume producer-director Roth was too busy planning the Daddy Day Care sequel to notice. As dire as 95 per cent of Christmas number one pop records, there's a lot of talk that this will be Curtis's last film. What a pity she didn't decide to call time after the highly creditable Freaky Friday remake rather than with this festive turkey. Verdict Christmas With The Kranks is the sort of film that leaves you thinking Ebenezer Scrooge might have had the right idea about the festive season. |
