This is one of those movies that gets worse the more you think about it.
Drew Latham (Ben Affleck, Paycheck) is a millionaire marketing genius who lives in a fabulous penthouse and has a girlfriend, Missy (Jennifer Morrison, Grind), who wants him to take her home to his family for Christmas instead of flying off to Fiji. Even though she looks smashing in her tight red dress, Drew blanches at the word “family,” and Missy marches off.
Because he’s basically unlikable, Drew can’t find anyone to take him in for the holidays. A psychiatrist convinces him to find a place that reminds him of the holidays, write all his grievances on a piece of paper, and burn them. So Drew returns to his childhood home in Illinois.
After the current owner, Tom Valco (James Gandolfini, TV’s The Sopranos), knocks him out with a snow shovel, Drew offers Tom $250,000 to move in with him and rent his family for Christmas. Family members include neglected wife Christine (Catherine O’Hara, Best in Show) and isolated teenage son Brian (Josh Zuckerman, Austin Powers in Goldmember).
Tom forgets to mention his other child, angry Alicia (Christina Applegate, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy), who also comes home for the holidays. Of course, she and Drew hate each another immediately.
Because he’s got the green stuff, Drew forces everyone to cater to his fantasies of what a happy family should do at Christmas. He’s lavish with his presents, buying Christine a makeover in the hopes that she might be able to spark tubby Tom with sexy thoughts. Christine gets done up like a whore and poses for a gay photographer. For some reason, the guy puts one of Christine’s photos (let’s just say her boots are above her head) on a porno Web site that just happens to be her son’s favorite hangout.
When Brian sees his mother on the Internet, he’s traumatized for life. Everybody gets upset, including Missy and her parents, who happen to show up unannounced, interrupting Alicia’s attempts to lock lips with Drew in the kitchen.
Oh dear, I can’t go on. Combining the birth of Christ with porno shots of Mom is too much.
Surviving Christmas is so crass it should be put in the dictionary as a definition for the word. It’s so illogical, stupid and boring that I can’t believe anyone involved with this mess actually read the script. According to a piece of trivia on the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), there might not even have been one. Supposedly the brainless director, Mike Mitchell (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo), started shooting without a completed script and the cast improvised much of it. That’s hard to believe, because there’s not one piece of originality in the entire movie.
If you really want to succeed in “surviving Christmas,” don’t come anywhere near this piece of burnt coal.
— reviewed by Marci Miller
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