You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks

(2004)

Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

As a result of such individual thinking (and anti-capitalist belt-tightening) they meet with hilarious rejection from their friends and neighbours. Because, like, it’s wrong not to do what everyone else does, particularly at Christmas. Before too long, they are shown the error of their ways and learn the true meaning of something or other.

It says something that Tim Allen is better than his material, and by some distance the (too short) best section of the film has him revelling in curmudgeonly behaviour. Curtis plays the frumpy housewife all too well, such that she quickly becomes tiresome. Dan Aykroyd has a supporting role as an Aykroyd-like neighbour.

*1/2

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