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Christmas with the Kranks
Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG for brief language and suggestive content
Starring
Tim Allen,
Jamie Lee Curtis,
Julie Gonzalo,
Dan Aykroyd,
Jake Busey,
Cheech Marin,
Caroline Rhea,
and
Erik Per Sullivan
Based on John Grisham's best-selling novel Skipping Christmas, this comedy stars Tim Allen as Luther Krank, a man who decides to skip Christmas and all the surrounding trappings and go on a vacation with his wife Nora (Curtis) instead. But when his daughter decides, at the last minute, to come home for the holidays, he is forced to put christmas back together. (Sony)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Chris Columbus
John Grisham (novel Skipping Christmas)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Joe Roth
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 8, 2005
Theatrical: November 24, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
98 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
70
Variety
Scott Foundas
Ultimately something of a softball satire, its climactic evocation of the "true meaning" of the holidays is surprisingly touching.
50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Not an abomination, although it is uninspired and insipid. As such, it's perfect television fare.
50
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
A flat parable about the virtues of homespun conformity and the perils of defying family tradition.
42
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Above all, Kranks lacks that basic kernel of credibility that even a goofy farce needs to work.
40
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
A Christmas comedy where laughs and even Christmas joy are in short supply.
40
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Slick and treacherous.
38
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
Phony, disingenuous family entertainment, suffocated by its green bean casserole approach to Middle America, spineless cardboard characters and paper-thin plot "twists."
38
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
Christmas with the Kranks is so calculated that it's pathetic, a warm-hearted holiday greeting card with not one scintilla of honest emotion inside.
38
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
They pull it off, but even if you believe in Santa, you'll never believe that this is any sort of holiday classic.
38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
M. 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.
33
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
In its hostile sitcom way, Christmas With the Kranks is a paranoid comic nightmare of conformity gone mad.
30
LA Weekly
Robert Abele
Other 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.
30
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
In 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.
30
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Keith Phipps
Hard not to pelt the screen with rotten fruit when confronted with a film like Christmas With The Kranks.
30
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
It's hard to discern exactly whom this holiday tripe is for.
30
TV Guide
Angel Cohn
Curtis' considerable and diverse talents don't go entirely unused.
30
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
It 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.
25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Its main message is that everyone should believe and behave in exactly the same way. Groupthink wins again!
25
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A lethargic, lurching holiday-themed comedy.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Filled with overly processed situations it tries to sell with manic energy, "Kranks" is canned, hammy and rolling as fast as it can.
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Ho, ho, horrible.
25
Premiere
Peter Debruge
Kranks 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
25
USA Today
Claudia Puig
For 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.
25
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
A loud, coarse and witless family comedy.
25
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Doesn'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.
20
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Bad can't begin to describe Christmas With the Kranks. It's sub-humbug.
20
Village Voice
Akiva Gottlieb
Cringe-worthy spectacle.
20
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Everyone 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.
12
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Kranks 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.
10
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
As 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.
10
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
An abysmal failure.
0
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
When 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.
0
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Egregiously 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!
 The average user rating for this movie is 2.6 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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