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70Ultimately something of a softball satire, its climactic evocation of the "true meaning" of the holidays is surprisingly touching.
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50Not an abomination, although it is uninspired and insipid. As such, it's perfect television fare.
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50A flat parable about the virtues of homespun conformity and the perils of defying family tradition.
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42Above all, Kranks lacks that basic kernel of credibility that even a goofy farce needs to work.
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40A Christmas comedy where laughs and even Christmas joy are in short supply.
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40Slick and treacherous.
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38Phony, disingenuous family entertainment, suffocated by its green bean casserole approach to Middle America, spineless cardboard characters and paper-thin plot "twists."
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38They pull it off, but even if you believe in Santa, you'll never believe that this is any sort of holiday classic.
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38Christmas with the Kranks is so calculated that it's pathetic, a warm-hearted holiday greeting card with not one scintilla of honest emotion inside.
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38M. Emmet Walsh and Elizabeth Franz enliven the film as a couple across the street...These wonderful old actors briefly raise the level of the picture to the kind of warm but honest drama it ought to have been.
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33In its hostile sitcom way, Christmas With the Kranks is a paranoid comic nightmare of conformity gone mad.
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30Curtis' considerable and diverse talents don't go entirely unused.
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30It's hard to discern exactly whom this holiday tripe is for.
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30Other lumps of coal in this celluloid stocking include director Joe Roth's leaden pacing - like trudging through heavy snow - and screenwriter Chris Columbus' tireless affinity for pain gags.
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30Hard not to pelt the screen with rotten fruit when confronted with a film like Christmas With The Kranks.
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30It would be one thing if Christmas With the Kranks were a satire on the assaultive, bullying nature of contemporary Christmas celebration in this country, but it's not. It's an ugly glorification of it.
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30In any normal year this dire comedy would be the undisputed lump of coal in our psychic stocking, but with "Surviving Christmas" still in theaters it's a close second.
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25Doesn't have anything wrong with it that couldn't be fixed by adding Ebenezer Scrooge and Bad Santa to the cast. It's a holiday movie of stunning awfulness that gets even worse when it turns gooey at the end.
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25Its main message is that everyone should believe and behave in exactly the same way. Groupthink wins again!
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25A loud, coarse and witless family comedy.
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25A lethargic, lurching holiday-themed comedy.
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25Filled with overly processed situations it tries to sell with manic energy, "Kranks" is canned, hammy and rolling as fast as it can.
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25For a comedian (Allen) who often seems to be calling it in, he's more lackluster than usual. Curtis is a bigger disappointment, especially after "Freaky Friday," in which she was funny, smart and cheeky.
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25Kranks is the type of grim holiday movie that reminds you of all that is noxious and insincere about the Christmas season and then chases it down with a sickly-sweet reversal
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25Ho, ho, horrible.
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Cringe-worthy spectacle.
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20Bad can't begin to describe Christmas With the Kranks. It's sub-humbug.
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20Everyone in the film is mean-spirited, manipulative and repulsive, and I'm only talking about the women! The men are much worse, particularly Dan Aykroyd.
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12Kranks is a feel-good movie in which every character is hateful (except, sigh, the cancer lady), and a Christmas movie too chickenhearted to mention Jesus.
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10An abysmal failure.
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10As the year stumbles toward its conclusion and critics begin penning their best-and-worst compendiums, here's a holiday contender fit for the all-time Naughty List.
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0When is a holiday stocking more like a smelly gym sock? When it's the malodorous Christmas With the Kranks, a so-called comedy stuffed with bigotry, intolerance and bullying.
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0Egregiously mediocre and flagrantly ill-conceived in every department, this is, truly, the cinematic equivalent of finding a single solitary Saltine in your stocking and a pair of old tube socks beneath the tree. Humbug!
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 37
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Mixed: 2 out of 37
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Negative: 27 out of 37
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