With their daughter, Blair, planning to be gone for the Holidays, Luther and Nora Krank (Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis) decide to skip Christmas and go on a cruise. However, the neighbors, led by the dictatorial Vic Frohmeyer (Dan Aykroyd) are upset by this lack of tradition and start protests. When Blair calls on Christmas Eve to say she has is coming after all, and with a new fiancée, the Kranks must put on their normal Christmas extravaganza with only a few hours notice.
It’s important to have a goal, and Tim Allen has an interesting one. He starred in the pleasant The Santa Clause and since then, he’s strived to be in a steady stream of worsening Christmas films. The Santa Clause 2 was a big step in the “right” direction, but he surpassed himself with Christmas with the Kranks. How he must have searched for a project this repugnant. Certainly his own acting was a piece of the disaster, but the script is the real masterpiece. Writing this bad doesn’t come around every day.
So, how do things go so horribly, horribly wrong? Mainly by sticking two movies together that don’t fit, and doing them both poorly. The first hour (or more; or less; God knows I don’t want to watch it again to time it), could have been a dark satire. It isn’t, but it could have been. Luther decides to skip Christmas and his near-Nazi neighbors attempt to force the Kranks to conform to mindless over-indulgence and materialism. There’s a lot of room for some funny jabs at a society which has lost touch with anything meaningful, but this is never followed through. The neighbors are obsessively nasty, but the film refuses to paint them as villains. No matter what insane lengths they go to (including screaming from the driveway, setting carolers to peep in the windows, and assaulting Nora as she tries to drive off), it is always kept as an option that they are right. It feels like an uncomfortable buildup that never reaches a climax.
Then film one ends, and the second begins. It is a slapstick-filled farce. Once Blair calls to say she’s coming for Christmas, we’re told in no uncertain terms that Luther and his desire to skip out on the goose-stepping is the problem. He’s been the real villain, and the materialistic demi-Nazis were right. It’s all about fitting into the local norm, and that involves lots of falling off roofs and dropping of food. Luckily, the SS are there in numbers to make sure that Blair never learns of her father’s blasphemy. As long as Luther surrenders individuality, then the purely empty Christmas will be saved. Hurrah! In case that doesn’t sound heart-warming enough, the script also gives us a dying woman with cancer (besides, this is a comedy, and what’s funnier than cancer?). Luther must go over to see these terrible people to bring a little cheer to the death house. Why the woman’s daughter, who made a huge deal of informing both Nora and the audience about the disease, is absent, is never explained.
While religion is hardly mentioned (Christmas is purely a time for lights competitions, though there is brief contempt spat at Judaism and Budism), I have to wonder how these people would behave if a Jew or Muslim lived in the subdivision. Would they hound them or simply string them up? It’s not really something to dwell on, since I’m sure non-Christians wouldn’t be allowed in the area. However, thinking about that while the film is playing could save you from hearing some of the dialog, so it does serve a purpose.
I’ve got to hand it to Allen, though he’s painted himself into a corner. Where can he find a worse film as a follow-up? But my hat is off as well to those that helped him. He couldn’t have done it without Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd, who went out of their way to prove that their best years are far behind them. That these two once starred together in the excellent, Christmas themed, Trading Places, just makes their fall all the more impressive. And I can’t forget John Grisham who’s responsible for the novel that started it all, because who can bring forth the joy of the season like the man who wrote The Pelican Brief? Finally, there is producer-writer Chris Columbus, who brings the same keen cinematic talent to play that he used in making the maudlin Bicentennial Man. Yes, it is Columbus who is the real man of the hour. By advocating cult-like adherence to the group, as well as materialism over meaning, and combining that with a complete absence of humor, he’s created a fetid piece of cinema that has something to offend, irritate, and bore everyone. Merry Christmas.