The weather is getting colder, the trees are changing colors, yep it’s that time of year again, time for another Tim Allen Christmas movie. This year finds Allen bringing the best selling, non-lawyer related John Grisham novel, Skipping Christmas to the big screen, with Christmas with the Kranks.
Luther and Nora Krank’s daughter is all grown up and gone for the first Christmas of her lifetime, dealing with an empty nest, the Krank’s decide this year they will skip Christmas and go on a Caribbean Cruise instead. This does not go over well with the neighbors, and trying to skip Christmas becomes a lot harder than they originally thought. Can they do it?
Trying to skip Christmas would be difficult as it is everywhere, and the premise of the film should allow for a lot of opportunities for laughs. Unfortunately, most of the jokes fall flat as the movie never really capitalizes on its main theme of the peer pressure brought on by life in suburbia.
The jokes are extremely cartoonish and so are some of the characters, but not enough to make them a strength of the film. Instead they seem to just be tossed in haphazardly, or seem to be put in by the director to try and get a laugh from a sight gag.
The other part of any Christmas film is the heartwarming message. This film tries to pull one off as well, but once again fails as the emotions come off as sappy and cookie-cutter. In fact, large parts of this film feel pieced together and un-original.
Kranks had a lot of parallels to one of my favorite holiday movies Christmas Vacation, especially Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis portrayal of the Kranks, coming off as a poor man’s Griswalds as they weren’t able to come close to living up to the predecessor. Unless you just love movies about Christmas, I would avoid spending Christmas with the Kranks, and simply watch Christmas Vacation.
