by Jason Daniel Baker

Created on: May 05, 2007   Last Updated: December 24, 2009

CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS (2005) Starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Ackroyd, M.Emmett Walsh, Jake Busey, Cheech Marin, Felicity Huffman.

Directed by Joe Roth

Running time: 98 minutes.

Rating: PG

Prosperous power couple pushing 50 decide to boycott the holidays and spend their $6,000 Christmas budget (?!) on a cruise instead of staying home and celebrating it the old-fashioned way when their daughter goes off to her peace corps responsibilities.

They get bullied by their peers into reverting back to their old traditional ways but don't budge until their daughter informs them she is returning with her fiance to introduce then they want to put on the best old-fashioned Christmas ever.

Plays like a typical Disney movie they made back in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Here Tim Allen is playing the role that would probably have been played by Fred MacMurray. Jamie Lee Curtis is playing the role that likely would have been played by Donna Reed or Doris Day. Ackroyd's role probably could have been played by Tony Randall or John Astin.

What world is this? On my street nobody puts up a fake snowman or has a daughter in the Peace Corps or donates $300 to their church every year. But, then I live in West Toronto.

It's a family entertainment comedy but it isn't funny by any stretch. Not even the stupid sight gags. There is no edge to the characters (by design it looks like). It is writer John Grisham's attempt at comedy. Yep, thats right - John Grisham - the guy who writes all those legal thrillers.

Moral majority people will be the kind of people that like this movie and will wonder why more of them have not been made.

I still have to wonder how Tim Allen got himself into this family entertainment niche. On a tabloid news show it was revealed that he hosted the video version of the annual "Nudes-a-Poppin'" beauty pageant. His stand-up act was not exactly family viewing either and then there's his drug bust. People really can change. Even their public image can change 180 degrees.

HOME IMPROVEMENT and THE SANTA CLAUSE movies have really typecast him.

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