False, littered with lame slapstick, and leaving the impression that director Joe Roth ... threw it together in about two weeks.
Comment
11/24/04
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
5
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:129
Fresh:6
Rotten:123
Average Rating:2.8/10
Consensus: A mirthless movie as fresh as last year's fruit cake, Christmas with the Kranks is a course, garish comedy that promotes conformity.
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: The Kranks have always celebrated a picture-perfect Christmas. But with their only daughter, Blair (Julie Gonzalo), away from home on her Peace Corps assignment, Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Luther... [More]
Starring: Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd, Erik Per Sullivan
Director: Joe Roth
Reviews for Christmas with the Kranks
It's a colossal miscalculation.
11/24/04
Top CriticRoth and Columbus serve up strained slapstick routines, a slew of uninvolving characters and tritely manipulative subplots.
11/24/04
If Christmas means spending it with the irascible, over-the-top Kranks, then taking a Caribbean cruise really does sound like a much better deal.
11/24/04
Not since Arnold Schwarzenegger's Jingle All the Way has there been a Yuletide film as fascistic -- or as odious -- as Christmas With the Kranks.
11/24/04
[R]eally rather chilling, an unintentional Orwellian object lesson in what happens when you deviate from the groupthink....
11/24/04
Forget the Kranks going on vacation; take your disbelief and send it on a cruise.
11/24/04
Shockingly aloof, and often dispassionately alienating.
11/24/04
You have a standing invitation to the Krank's for Christmas. My advice... Decline.
11/24/04
Agonizingly cruel to its audience and actors alike, and laden with jokes that have been done many times before, and the original gags have never been done for good reason.
11/24/04
Kranks lacks that basic kernel of credibility that even a goofy farce needs to work.
11/23/04
Unless audiences think Curtis scampering after a runaway ham is funny, they'll want to skip this Christmas movie instead.
11/23/04
A flat parable.
11/23/04
Top CriticJoyless and forced.
11/23/04
I feel more like the Grinch with each passing holiday film...
11/23/04
Phony, disingenuous family entertainment, suffocated by its green bean casserole approach to Middle America, spineless cardboard characters and paper-thin plot 'twists.'
11/23/04
...the perfect way to usher in the Fourth Reich...The film’s one great saving grace is its almost utter lack of humor, which blunts its potential to propagandize effectively
11/23/04
Not since the day I read Mein Kampf and rented Shoah have I had an experience so joyless and laugh-free
11/23/04
Does an outrageous about-face, neatly dismantling anything of potential worth and coming out with a monumentally phony Christmas moral.
11/23/04
Chris Columbus got the bizarre idea that a Grisham book, even a slight one, should be turned into a Home Alone for grown-ups.
11/23/04
Latest News for Christmas with the Kranks
December 20, 2007:
Vatican Gloats Over Weak Performance of The Golden Compass
Attention, filmgoers who have seen and enjoyed The Golden Compass: According to The Vatican, you're either "dishonest" or you haven't been "gifted with a critical spirit." More...
November 02, 2006:
Critical Consensus: "Borat" Best Reviewed Film Of Year: High-Five!; "Flushed Away" Worth A Spin; "Santa Clause 3" Gets Coal
This week at the movies brings us the profound discoveries of a great Kazak journalist ("Borat," starring Sacha Baron Cohen), a battle between Santa and Jack Frost... More...
December 15, 2005:
Critical Consensus: A Sly "Family Stone," A Towering "Kong"
This week at the movies, we have a giant ape {"King Kong"} and some yuletide dramedy ("The Family Stone"). Will the critics go bananas for these flicks? More...
October 20, 2005:
Trailer Bulletin: Freedomland
From director Joe Roth and screenwriter Richard Price comes "Freedomland," an apparently racially-charged kidnapping thriller that stars Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne... More...
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