It
is the return of SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES! Are we excited about this news?
Okay,
well, what if I told you that this was Day #6 of THE
POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR? That ought
to make you excited, right?
Okay,
well, what if I told you that I had $1,000 to give out to EVERYONE WHO READS
THIS POST?!?
Well,
I'm sure that would be nice.
Unfortunately, I do not have that much money on me, and I cannot keep
that promise. But since you're here, I
thought I would have a discussion on a holiday movie.
I
imagine that as of right now, all of you are making your preparations for the
holidays, and most of you probably have your own holiday traditions. You might have a winter bonfire in your
backyard every Christmas Eve. You may
have a special stuffing recipe that you have to make every year. You might even have a holiday challenge
where you compete to see who can eat the most candy canes in a row!
Whatever
your traditions are, I would think that most of them are family-oriented. After all, the holidays are all about
spending time with your family and friends, and being thankful for having
another holiday season to spend with them.
But
what happens when a little kink gets thrown into your perfect family
Christmas? Suppose that bad weather
prevents your whole family from being able to fly in for the holidays. Or, maybe you get sick on Christmas Eve and
are bedridden for Christmas Day. Or
perhaps your daughter is unable to come home for Christmas because she has gone
off to have an adventure out of the continent.
That would be quite the Christmas dilemma, wouldn't it?
So,
what do you do? Do you decide to have
Christmas anyway without your loved ones, thinking that it is the right thing
to do? Do you postpone Christmas for a
few days and have a celebration closer to the New Year? Or do you just decide to forget about
Christmas and just go on an extended cruise away from it all?
Well,
I can tell you that in today's movie discussion, one family faces that very
choice. And when they make a choice
that baffles their friends, infuriates the neighbours, and causes everyone to
wonder what they were thinking, they wonder if they made the right choice at
all.
But
when you spend "Christmas With The Kranks", anything is
possible!
Now,
granted, this film is probably not going to be held in as high regard as
classics such as "It's A Wonderful Life", "Miracle on 34th
Street", or even "Home Alone".
It was critically panned, and I even have to question why the decision
not to host a Christmas celebration would be equated to a man breaking into an
orphanage on Christmas Eve and stealing all of their Christmas goodies. But we'll get to that a little later.
The
film was directed by Joe Roth, and the screenplay was penned by Chris Columbus
(who also worked on "Home Alone" and the first few Harry Potter
movies). Released on November 24, 2004
(has it really been ten years since this came out?), the film stars Tim Allen,
Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd, Erik Per Sullivan, Cheech Marin, and M. Emmet
Walsh.
So,
as you may have gathered, Luther and Nora Krank (Allen and Curtis) have decided
that they are going to have a Christmas celebration unlike any other. And how this Christmas will be different? They simply aren't going to celebrate it!
Normally,
the Krank family goes all out for the holidays. But when their daughter Blair opts to go to South America on a
Peace Corps mission during the holidays, the Kranks decide that the Christmas
season won't be the same without her.
Plus, they were shocked to learn that their last holiday cost them a
total of over six thousand dollars.
(Okay,
what family aside from the Trumps spends SIX GRAND on Christmas?!? On second thought, don't answer that.)
Anyway,
the Kranks decide not to wallow in self-pity over not having Blair home for the
holidays. They make the decision to use
the six thousand that they would have spent on the holidays to book themselves
a ten-day holiday cruise in the Caribbean.
What could be better than that?
Well,
according to the residents of Hemlock Street - the street where the Kranks live
- ANYTHING would have been better.
Turns out that the Kranks decision not to decorate their home, purchase
a Christmas tree, or buy Christmas gifts has caused a lot of outrage in the
community. The neighbours of the Krank
family basically turn the Kranks into public enemy number one. Walt Scheel (Walsh) and Vic Frohmeyer
(Aykroyd) seem to be launching the campaign to force the Kranks to wake up and
smell the mistletoe. For Frohmeyer, it
is simply because he wants to have their neighbourhood win the contest for best
decorated street. But Walt may have an
even bigger reason for wanting to spread a little holiday joy to the
Kranks...one that we won't understand until the end of the film.
Needless
to say, the Kranks are very determined to stand their ground, and even if the
entire town despises them, and calls them out on what the townspeople perceive
to be Scrooge like behaviour, nothing will stop them from having the
non-Christmas Christmas that they have planned.
Well,
except for the fact that Blair has gotten engaged to a man from Peru and plans
on surprising her parents by bringing him home for Christmas so he can observe
a real American holiday celebration!
Can
you say honey glazed ham panic here?
Anyway,
I won't reveal any more plot points here.
If I do, you won't be compelled to watch the rest of it, even if critics
savaged it. However, I do see what
message the film is trying to say, even if the neighbours of the Krank family
end up looking like jerks in the process.
I guess the message is that no matter how little, or how much a person
decorates, everyone can be infected with the wonderful spirit of the
holidays. It's also a cunning example
of how materialistic some people can get over the holidays. You don't have to have a Caribbean cruise,
or win the prize for best decorated house, or even prepare the perfect
Christmas ham. All you need is the
people who love you the most. After
all, time is quite precious. That's the
best gift to give someone.
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