There is only one person who will legitimately enjoy the stagnant, putrid holiday abomination \Christmas with the Kranks,"" and that is Ben Affleck. Affleck recently starred in another Yuletide atrocity, ""Surviving Christmas,"" a critically panned flop that has now been proven to be only a slight harbinger of 2004's ultimate lump of coal. Thanks to ""Christmas with the Kranks,"" which is not only the worst movie of this year but the worst holiday film ever made, Affleck may find comfort in the fact that his Xmas turkeys, also including ""Reindeer Games,"" resemble masterpieces of filmmaking in comparison to this cinematic cesspool.
Joe Roth's disingenuous, nauseatingly bad film, based upon a John Grisham novel, concerns the misadventures of Luther (Tim Allen) and Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) Krank, a suburban couple suffering from empty-nest syndrome after their daughter hightails it to Peru with the Peace Corps (which means, gasp, she won't be home for Christmas). The Kranks, who are usually gluttons in anything Christmas-y whatsoever, decide to decline their customary festivities in favor of a discount cruise vacation. Their neighbors, led by ringleader Dan Aykroyd, are affronted by this presumably callous and selfish decision and spend the majority of the movie harassing them for it. But when daughter Krank announces she is indeed coming home with her new fianc??, Luther and Nora abandon their $6,000 trip and, in a set of dreadfully zany hijinks, scramble to gather their traditional Christmas materials.
What makes this film disgusting rather than merely banal is not the labored, painfully unfunny sight gags (Allen freezing a cat with his hose, Curtis toppling over a grocery aisle in pursuit of a coveted hickory ham) nor the phony sentimentality that creeps its way into every available scene, but the incessant, veritably fascist support of materialism and religious intolerance. There is a pervasive sense of xenophobia and secular hatred that oozes from every execrable frame. Not only do director Roth and screenwriter Chris Columbus (""Mrs. Doubtfire,"" ""Home Alone"") portray the Kranks' annoying, sickeningly narrow-minded neighbors as heroes and overwhelmingly support consumerist conformity, they shoehorn in any ignorant jab against minorities possible (a ""valiant"" neighbor sneers nastily at the unspeakable prospect of the Kranks being Muslims or Jews).
Considering that Chris Columbus, Tim Allen and Joe Roth, whose other films include ""America's Sweethearts"" and ""Revenge of the Nerds II,"" are arguably the most untalented major players in show business today, the shoddy quality of ""Christmas with the Kranks"" shouldn't come as a surprise. But somehow Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd and even Cheech Marin were coerced into starring in this disgraceful excuse for a comedy. As she showed in the so-so ""Freaky Friday,"" Curtis is a talented comedic actress. But there is nothing humanly possible that she can do to enliven the stale pratfalls besides emit an ear-piercing shriek whenever her daughter's name is mentioned. It is also excruciatingly embarrassing when Columbus' script forces her to parade around in a teeny bikini during an extended gag, both a reminder of how many years have passed since her flesh-baring days in ""Trading Places"" and what a colossal bastard Joe Roth must be for lingering on her unflattering flab for what feels like an eternity.
""Christmas with the Kranks"" is the pinnacle of mainstream ineptitude, a horribly misguided celebration of crass consumerism, bigotry and ignorance coupled with the lamest attempts at humor imaginable. It cements 2004 as the worst crop of holiday fare in recent memory (after last year's success with ""Bad Santa"" and ""Elf,"" which satiated Christmas lovers and Scrooges alike), with ""Christmas with the Kranks"" outdoing both ""Surviving Christmas"" and ""Polar Express"" as its repugnant cherry on top. But, like most clueless cinema that celebrates negative stereotypes and slapstick incompetence (i.e. ""Bringing Down the House""), the grotesque, laughless ""Christmas with the Kranks"" will probably be somewhat successful at the box office. Maybe ""Christmas with the Kranks"" will tank spectacularly and Tim Allen's career will abruptly come to an end-that would be a real Christmas miracle.
