Christmas with The Kranks (2004)

[Knighty 1]

Having watched this recently on Netflix (for some reason) I think this would be perfect for a Christmas Special. An utterly bizzare film Based on a non Courtroom based John Grisham novel.

Not only does it have Tim Allen (good enough already surely? ) but Jamie Lee Curtis who plays a mother character who seems to permanently be on the verge of a mental breakdown.

 

Some highlights include a pervy Asian man seemingly ejaculating while watching Jamie In a sunbed, Tim Allen pushing a child to the floor and jumping on him and a frozen cat.

 

Amazingly bad.

[egregious 5]

Surviving Christmas starring Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini would also make a great show. It was like Jingle All the Way for the 2000s!

[maggotlimbo 4]

I'm LITERALLY just scanning through the movies on my mothers' crappy cable package. 90 bucks a month. Gremlins is on 47 times. 'Gizmo caca' indeed.

[wyldride 285]

A movie where the neighbourhood bullies the family for half the movie and then gets their way in the end. Yay bullies!

[WillEvans 0]

Christmas with the Kranks is a brilliant recommendation for this podcast. It's oddly watchable, despite being a shit-show.

[jarrycanada 2483]

On a scale of one to ten, Ten being the worst. How irritating is Tim Allen in this movie.?

 

I've never watched this movie and yet I've seen it on a lot of those worst Christmas movie lists.

For me Tim Allen is on the level of Rob Schneider of comedy.

 

Hey did Rob Schneider ever make a christmas movie?

[jarrycanada 2483]

answered my own question: YES!!!

 

He was in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

 

But he didn't star in that movie or get on the movie poster so I am not sure if that counts.

[DeathToMikeyBay 130]

Have to bump this because I just watched it last night and HOLY SHIT.

It's more batshit/awful/trainwreck than Jingle All the Way and Deck the Halls combined. A constant barrage of "gags" that come off like a space alien's understanding of Earthling humor. It's also one of those "Who is this for?" movies because the gags are too childish for adults, yet the subject matter is nothing children would relate to.

Then your mind is blown even further when the credits reveal that this was based on a John Grisham book!

Tim Allen & Jamie Lee Curtis bid farewell to their daughter who leaves for Peru to join the Peace Corps for a year. They decide that instead of the usual Christmas, they will go off on a tropical cruise.

Tim Allen decides to extend this to a space alien degree by refusing to do anything Christmas related, including attending the office party, putting up decorations, or donating to charities! He even decides to send out notices to everyone in his office that he's boycotting Christmas, like an obnoxious militant atheist who can't shut up about not believing in anything.

The space alien alternate reality creeps in multiple times where the movie expects us to believe:

-That the Boy Scouts raise money by selling giant Christmas trees door to door, from the back of a giant cargo truck.

-That entire neighborhoods of 10 year old boys give a shit whether or not some neighbor puts up a plastic Frosty the snowman statue.

-That there are people who dress up as Santa during rainstorms to stand out on the street selling umbrellas. (said Santa goes off to sell umbrellas during a snowstorm at the end)

-That your parish priest seeing you in a bathing suit is the worst possible scandal ever.

 

The technology in the movie is bizarrely outdated, even for 2005. Tim Allen's work computer monitor looks like a B&W Apple model from the mid 80s. He types up his Christmas boycott letter in what you assume is going to be a mass email, but then he prints out a hundred physical copies...on fancy company stationary!

John Grisham, the man worth $350 million, believes that hiring a band for a homeless shelter charity dinner costs $15,000.

So the entire town learns that they're not putting up Christmas decorations and decide to harass them to the degree that there are throngs of protestors blocking their house 24/7 taking up "Free Frosty" chants. You could alter the story to have the Kranks be a Jewish family in 1930s Germany (with Dan Akroyd as the local Blockleiter) and it would play out exactly the same.

Christmas Eve, the night before they leave for the cruise, their daughter calls to announce that she's 8 hours away from coming home. See, she decided to quit the Peace Corps after a month to marry a Peruvian doctor. Nobody ever questions this as a shitty idea, or her as an awful person. Not only do her parents not say, "Too bad. We already booked this $3000 cruise," but they're too terrified to even mention that they planned a cruise. They go into a panic in order to put up a facade that they never planned a cruise and were throwing a big Christmas party all along. The entire town, happy now that the Kranks have embraced National Socialiasm, join in a one thousand man hour effort in order to throw up the illusion of a grand celebration like the daughter was the Tsarina inspecting the countryside.

Tim Allen complains that he's been planning the Christmas day cruise "for six weeks", even though he started the Sunday after Thanksgiving. He finally decides to give away the tickets to the neighbors whose wife has terminal cancer. He announces "you can't refund them anyway". Wow, what a heartfelt charitable gesture.

Blah blah blah the movie keeps going 20 minutes after it should have ended. Something about a burglar, Cheech and Jake Busey playing cops, and finally the umbrella Santa Claus turning out to be the real Santa Claus who flies away in a VW Beetle pulled by cgi reindeer. I shit you not.

This would make an amazing episode.