“Let’s watch Christmas with the Kranks,” I said. “It’ll be fun,” I said. For this week’s Bad Movie Review, Margaux, Samir, and I decided to watch something appropriately stupid and awful, and boy, Christmas with the Kranks really fits the bill. If you love Christmas, be forewarned, this movie will turn you into a fucking Grinch.
Samir: Merry Christmas Bitches!! I mean Kranks.
Trevor: Oh man, I was thinking, “If this son of a bitch says Kranks-mas…”
Samir, you were not kidding about this movie. That was a looong 98 minutes.
Samir: I told you! When we paused for a small break after what felt like hours in Saturday school, we’d only been through 40 minutes!!
Margaux: For a Christmas themed movie, it was surprisingly bleak through and through. Why didn’t anyone tell Jamie Lee Curtis that this wasn’t the Christmas follow-up to Halloween 2.0?
Samir: Yeah she still had Laurie Strode’s conservative boring hairdo borrowed from Dorothy Hamill circa 1976.
Trevor: The first 20 or so minutes of this movie were so depressing. God, what a bummer. It might have been 20 minutes, who knows; time moves differently when you’re watching Christmas with the Kranks.
Margaux: I’m still in shock that Christmas with The Kranks is based on a John Fucking Grisham novel. Who thought that would be a fun, light-hearted holiday romp? I almost turned it off when that credit rolled. In my notes I wrote, “Tim Allen’s name is Luther Krank…there’s a joke there…come back to me.” Abandon all hope now that this movie is even the good kind of bad.
Samir: As is usual with terrible movies, the entire concept was utterly pointless. I just didn’t understand why all of Christmas had to be cancelled – like why did they have to skip decorating or wishing people a happy holiday? Why did everyone they know ALSO have to acknowledge and be a part of their “Skipping Christmas”? Did taking a destination holiday mean they also had to sacrifice their basic human decency or friendliness? Why did they have to become sourpuss curmudgeons to take a vacation?
Margaux: The Kranks needed a divorce, not a vacation. And why the shit was Jamie Lee Curtis dressed in like Molly Shannon in the Schweddy Balls SNL sketch??
Trevor: Guys, everyone in this movie was a fucking psychopath. I haven’t seen characters this detached from any semblance of reality since The Third Wheel. Just 98 minutes of nonstop WTF. The Kranks (also – that name? WHAT?) decide to go on a cruise and it just fucking ruins everyone’s entire life. WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE. Remember when Nora called Luther at work because the neighbors were on the lawn, demanding Frosty? She was terrified! I feel like this could be pretty easily recut into a horror film with Dan Aykroyd as the villain.
And yes, Margaux, I would have divorced the fuck out of Jamie Lee Curtis.
Samir: Throughout I kept wondering what cult compound this film was set in, because these people were scarily Children of the Corn-style impassioned about preserving the holiday spirit. If they put as much energy into fighting world hunger as they did decorating their neighborhood and forcing others to comply with their strict requirements for holiday celebrations, I wouldn’t have to Save the Children with my $30/month donation. In fact didn’t someone actually use Helen Lovejoy’s line from The Simpsons: “Won’t someone please think of the children?!”
Margaux: What was more insane than all these weirdly slapstick characters was the fact this was supposed to take place in fucking RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA? Since when is this ENTIRE town so overcome with the holiday spirit? AND WHEN DID IT START SNOWING IN RIVERSIDE?! I’m LA born and raised and, that is just…FALSE. That has not and will not ever happen, Riverside is a desolate wasteland with a Raging Waters in the town over.
Samir: Riverside is a place you drive quickly through on your way to somewhere much more inviting, and this movie must confirm why that is. Maybe that’s mounds of cocaine snowed all over their homes and properties, which would explain their manic insanity over those who don’t do as they do.
Trevor: I hate to be “that guy,” but I think it might have been Riverside, Illinois; at one point Walt was seen with a car with an Illinois plate. Maybe geography is the one thing this shitpile got right.
Margaux: First, WHO DA FUCK IS WALT? Second, that wide shot of the town of Riverside and the surrounding towns, etc – at the very end, that is downtown LA, so not that good a job.
More questions, WHAT IS THE TIMELINE IN THIS STORY?! First they drop off their daughter at the airport, THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING. THEN, Luther complains he’s been planning this cruise for SIX WEEKS?! The whole thing started AFTER his kid left for the Peace Corps – which, LOL only in movies does this job still exist.
Trevor: I thought we established that time passes differently in this movie! Like when they go down on that water planet in Interstellar, where every hour planetside is seven years back on Earth? Yeah, similar experience to watching this.
Margaux: I didn’t see that shitheap Interstellar. And comparing the two here just ensured I never will ever see Interstellar.
Samir: I must also point out that the daughter decides to announce that she’s coming home for Christmas ON CHRISTMAS DAY, stupid jerk, and thus spoils her parents plans, and only then are they forced to reinstate their usual holiday plans for her. And to boot, she announces that she’s engaged?! How easy is it to go the Peace Corp, get engaged and decide to leave again in under a month and get a flight back home. How did she manage to get a flight from the undetermined locale she was supposed to be in without her parents realizing? Surely she didn’t pay out of her own pocket.
Margaux: Naturally, I have a lot of q’s about this “engagement.” She mentions it on the phone but then at the Christmas party, everyone refers to him as her boyfriend? And it’s not really brought up again because selfish Luther is pissed about his cruise. Or something. All I know is that was the most garbage speech I’ve ever heard. Why even bother writing that piece of dialogue? It was more moving in Ghost when they responded to “I love you” with “Ditto.”
Trevor: Everyone hated Luther, including and especially his wife. She must have had some undiagnosed behavioral disorder, because she turned on a fucking dime all the time. It wasn’t cute. “Five minutes ago I was a genius!” “Well, now you’re an idiot.” She also calls him selfish and childish, but dropping $3,000 on a cruise to cheer your wife up is kind of…the opposite of selfish? If anyone was selfish it was that cunt Nora. “I just want to forget about it,” she says, referring to Christmas without their daughter. Well, then maybe you should cancel the pity party and stop bringing it up every ten goddamn seconds. You miserable bitch. Goddamnit, now I’m mad.
Samir: Well that daughter was clearly the glue holding together that passionless relationship. Without her, they literally couldn’t figure out what to do in bed next to each other, as sure a sign of impending divorce as anything else in the movie. Jamie Lee Curtis sure lands in a lot of shit roles. But I guess that’s to be expected if you’re main gig these days is Activia yogurt commercials, talking about how to get your bowel movements regulated again.
Trevor: Which is a funny coincidence, because this movie is pretty much diarrhea.
Margaux: I couldn’t wrap my mind about the running gag over canned ham, it went on too long and only highlighted the fact that JLC’s Nora was a manic depressive.
Trevor: Or Blair was a high-maintenance bitch who would flip her shit if she didn’t get the right ham.
Samir: And then they didn’t even EAT the ham- it was still sitting in the kitchen unopened after that weird Santa/umbrella salesman who kept stalking Luther gave them one.
Trevor: Oh shit, don’t get me started on the Santa character! “Marty,” as he was known, or as I thought he was, “weird pedophile who hangs out in the liquor store.” And then at the end he was Santa? Oh, um, spoiler alert, readers.
Margaux: He was the umbrella selling Santa in the beginning-ish of the movie that sort of inspired Tim Allen to say fuck Christmas (then say, un-fuck Christmas, here’s my $3,000 cruise, neighbors I vaguely hate). He was totally creepy though and the fact that he knew everyone’s name but no one had a fucking clue who he was or where he came from yet invited him to this supposedly intimate family gathering. It was the poor man’s version of trying to bring it full circle, I think?
Trevor: My final note was “So Marty is Santa? Fuck this movie.” But you bring up a good point, Margaux – meeting Santa in real life would be fucking creepy. “Oh hey Trevor, I see you’ve masturbated 8 thousand times this year, guess you’re not getting those Harry Potter LEGOs!”
Margaux: Hahaha, it wasn’t even the Santa connection. It was this strange, unsettling tone this movie established from the moment one (see: based on a novel by John Grisham) that something terrible was going to happen to these people over these 98 minutes. But instead, they were just wholly unlikeable and you just wished something terrible would happen to them.
What I’m trying to say is, I thought that Santa was gonna stab someone if no one figured out what his fucking name was.
Samir: Well of course he knows everyone’s name, he’s Santa! Wouldn’t you be disturbed by someone who spent his whole year watching others’ children and assigning them a naughty or nice status?
Trevor: Let me ask you guys a question: did you laugh at all? I’ll admit I did, twice. Once at the frozen cat, and once when the lady at the tanning booth said “You look like a corpse!” But two laughs per 98 minutes is a poor showing, especially when the first one doesn’t come until minute 27 (I counted).
Samir: I did laugh when Tim Allen said “don’t mention her face” and then we saw the girl’s face at the tanning salon. That was it. I just wasn’t amused by the whole “let’s take a vaction for Christmas,” but instead of being normal about it and telling people you’re not going to be there, they had to ruin everyone else’s Christmas to make their skipping of it a success. Maybe it’s because I’m always low on funds, but don’t most people just admit “I can’t afford to buy everyone presents, we’re doing a big family thing”?
Margaux: I laughed once, when Tim Allen figures out what wind surfing is. I mainly was waiting for it to be over, much like my first time. I already don’t like the holidays but this was just super uncomfortable and slightly depressing, like when your older Aunt tries to make “light of” her divorce and she’s forcing laughter in your face. “Bahaha Bob, THAT FUCKING ASSHOLE SON OF BITCH – HAHAHAHA ME AND MY THREE EGGS ARE HAVING A GREAT TIME WITH OUR CATS!!”
Trevor: A lot of this movie made me genuinely uncomfortable. Like when that guy Aubie – WHOSE NAME WAS AUBIE – straight-up followed Nora to lunch to narc on her not buying any Christmas cards.
Samir: I told you- CULT COMPOUND! It’s like all these people survived Jonestown and started their own Christmastown that does nothing else all year but prepare for this one moment, like in The Nightmare Before Christmas. And if the Kranks don’t celebrate the world will end in fire and brimstone.
Margaux: When Christmas with The Kranks finally ended, I had a Gob Bluth moment, “I’ve made a terrible mistake”…watching this movie. And now FX is showing hella commercials to promote it on their channel it’s like having ‘Nam flashbacks three times a day. All I wanna do is forget this movie was even ever made.
Samir: I don’t think that will be too difficult. It will vanish into the ether like so many other terrible movies of the past. Do you remember Juwanna Mann?
Trevor: Of course Chris Columbus wrote this crap. Jerkoff schmaltz merchant.
Samir: That’s far too nice of a name for him. I prefer something more appropriate to his detrimental contributions to cinema.
Trevor: (Readers, no one has written anything in about 30 seconds at this point, because I think we’re all sitting here trying to think of the most creative way to say “fuck Chris Columbus.”)
Samir: I just keep picturing that scene in Pink Flamingos where Divine eats a pile of doggie diarrhea when I think of Chris Columbus’ name – that’s what watching this movie is equivalent to.
Trevor: Aaaand there’s your Blu-Ray blurb.
Margaux: Right next to, “Don’t fucking watch this shitheap.”
Trevor: I’m so sorry I suggested this. But between this and The Host, I gotta admit, I have a knack for finding completely unwatchable garbage to subject us to. You guys wanna talk stars?
Margaux: Instead of stars, just burn this movie if you ever come across it in real life.
Samir: If rated in steaming turds, I give it 5 stinking logs. This movie was so full of shit the toilet’s jealous (to paraphrase Jinkx Monsoon) 🙂
Trevor: Okay, well I can’t rewrite the code on the site to display pieces of shit instead of stars, because if I could do that I would have, long ago. How about .5? We all laughed once. Honestly, I feel dirty just giving it .5.
Samir: Deal. Now keep it away.
Margaux: Three separate laughs over 98 minutes, a “holiday comedy” about unlikeable crazies! 5 Fart Noises!
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