Surviving Christmas

10/26/04 - Review

Christmas makes its way into October as we get our first feel of the up and coming holiday season.  Ben Affleck plays Drew Latham, a very successful businessman who has the perfect surprise for his girlfriend: a trip to Fiji. Unfortunately for him, she balks at the idea because Christmas is meant to be with families.  She walks off and leaves him to spend Christmas alone.

Determined to not spend Christmas alone, he decides to go to the house where he grew up.  However, another family is currently living there and they would like nothing better than to not see Drew again in their lives.  He propositions them with $250,000 if he can spend the next couple days with them in their home in hopes of recapturing that “holiday family spirit.”  The father Tom, (James Gandolfini) agrees without a bat of the eye. 

Even though a rocky start develops, Drew starts to show this family about the meaning of Christmas and all is well until their daughter, Alicia, (Christina Applegate) comes home, and the secret about an impending divorce clouds Drew’s family Christmas. But what fun would that be if it was dull and boring?

Much like last years movie, Bad Santa, Surviving Christmas tries to recapture what the Billy Bob Thornton led movie did, but to little avail.  Granted, there are a few brief moments of humor and hilariousness but more often then not, the film tried and tried but couldn’t. 

Now don’t get me wrong, Surviving Christmas is not absolutely horrible but then again, it’s not good either.  I guess you call it a great way to spend 90 minutes and not really care about anything.  The premise sounded really interesting and even funny but the way that it was pulled off was preposterous.  It did capture a bit of Christmas cheer and was actually inspirational at times if you can call it that. I call it a waste of talent.

The movie did movie fairly fast and dealt with some pretty tough issues such as divorce and breakup but this is a Christmas comedy so it doesn’t really fit in that well. I did find myself laughing several times during the movie because it was funny at times.  Other times, however, I was feeling a bit disappointed at the lack of comedy.

As I said before, the movie wastes the big name talent that is on the bill. Ben Affleck was decent as the rich business man.  I haven’t really seen him in a role like this so he did a so so job.  I really liked James Gandolfini’s character even though more could have been done with it.  Watching him on screen you can definitely see the Tony Soprano in him.  Christina Applegate and Catherine O’Hara were very much underused.  I really thought more could have been done with their characters but that would have made the movie longer and in the long run, made it dull and boring.  Hmmm…  It is a shame to waste talent like this with a really bad script.

Unless you want to pay $7 to see Christmas early this year, go rent Bad Santa or Christmas Vacation because they are the best comedy Christmas movies out there.  Surviving Christmas tries but in the end, it can’t even climb out of the pile of snow that is has buried itself in. 

Grade

What do you think?