Surviving Christmas Movie Review № 252028 / 838

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Surviving Christmas is a nominal comedy, one of those utterly forgettable yuletide movies fated to forever run out-of-season on various cable channels.

Working well within his comfort zone, Ben Affleck plays Drew Latham, a superficial Chicago marketing whiz whose behavior runs the gamut from callow to shallow. Rather than sit out the holidays in his sparsely appointed designer loft admiring his reflection in the hardwood floors and watching a video yule log on his flat-screen television, Drew chooses to pay the marginally functioning working-class family that now lives in his childhood home a quarter of a million dollars to adopt him for a few days and share their seasonal cheer.

The film is well cast, with James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Josh Zuckerman and Christina Applegate as Drew's rented family, but they're wasted on subpar material. Mike Mitchell's direction, which relies too heavily on genre clich??s, and the predictable script, credited to the teams of Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont and Jeffrey Ventimilia & Joshua Sternin, make for a dismally formulaic hodgepodge of crude humor and wan attempts to tug at the heart.

Kevin Crust
Los Angeles Times

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times