November 25-December 1, 2004

movies

Krank Rancors

christmas sopping: Tim Allen tries to opt out of the holiday.

Middle American family skips Christmas? Oh, the horror.

CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS

by Ryan Godfrey

John Grisham's throwaway holiday novella Skipping Christmas will cost you $14.95 to buy and throw away. There's a chance—factoring in mall crowds, traffic and distance to your Yuletide Dumpster --that doing so is a marginally better use of your holiday time and money than slogging through the cynical, extra-stupid film adaptation, Christmas with the Kranks.

It's probably just a coincidence, but many extra-stupid holiday movies star Tim Allen. In the present product, clunkily directed by Revolution Studios head Joe Roth, Allen is Luther Krank, a suburban Chicago accountant who decides that, with his daughter spending the holidays out of town for the first time, he and the missus should skip Christmas and go on a Caribbean cruise, saving money in the process.

It's not a bad idea, really. The problem is —by which I mean both the problem that drives the plot and the problem that makes the whole enterprise extra-stupid—skipping Christmas is apparently the worst thing you can do as a Middle American citizen and consumer. Luther's wife, Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis, with holly wreath vests and literal, if not figurative, bells on), is appalled. What about the annual Krank Christmas Eve party? What about the decorations? What about the children? But Luther is adamant, and Nora reluctantly goes along.

The community, however, is outraged. Luther's secretary complains about having to buy her own cheap perfume. The Cub Scouts don't get to sell one of their trees. The holiday gestalt of Placid Suburbia Street's traditional award-winning decor is marred by a single, Frosty-less rooftop.

The Kranks are not really deterred by the neighborhood uproar, but then the daughter calls on Christmas Eve on her way back from Peru (the Peace Corps being the toughest job you'll ever have for a month), and she can't wait for a traditional Krank Christmas. How horrible will it be if Krank Jr. ever finds out that her parents made other plans? Really, really, effingly, appallingly horrible. She must never know their unholy secret, and after abandoning their vacation, Luther and Nora have one afternoon to plan a Christmas party, decorate and sheepishly rustle up a coalition of the willing to help with the deception.

There's a perfectly serviceable 1940s morality play in here somewhere; Cukor or Sturges could have made quite a nice holiday layer cake—the cloying sentimentality made palatable by winking recognition of the characters' universal venality and a healthy dollop of irony. But the current endeavor, written and produced by Chris Columbus, is irony-free, saccharine and utterly false. These people on-screen just don't exist in real life, in red states or blue. Is it possible that this Columbus is still so far from discovering America?

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