Deck the Halls
Rated: PG If you loved Jingle All the Way and Christmas with the Kranks, you may have serious brain damage and should consult with your physician as soon as possible. There's a reason they only hold Presidential elections and the Olympics every four years: because if they didn't, they would become very tiresome, very quickly. Yet every holiday season we're treated to a new Christmas movie which will, at best, be watchable only once a year at that very special time when you've been so assulted with holiday cheer that your brain has been reduced to a green and red mush. But in our holiday stupor, Fox has decided to smack us around a little with Deck the Halls. 
For those where the plot on this one is the deal-breaker, I'll quickly sum-up: Matthew Broderick is Steve Finch, "The Christmas Guy". That's not actually his profession. He's an optomitrist and he's consulted at the beginning of the film by the crew putting up the Christmas tree in the middle of town. Oh, and he's got a special calendar for holiday events (I guess the "Fourth of July" guy has access to fireworks and flags). But oh no! Here comes Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) and his family. Buddy is usurping Steve's tenuous title by putting tons of lights on his house so it can be seen from space. And this eyesore from across the street sets off a war between these two dads while their families look on in horror. So Steve is trying to beat the Halls. Get it? The title is a pun! The title is a pun. Dear God, the title is a pun. A guy who covers his house in lights is not a motion picture. It's a YouTube video and you've already seen it. It's a guy who synchonized his light display to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter". If they had gotten someone with even half the imagination of that guy, then this movie might have had at little bit of spark. But no, we have John Whitesell, the creative mastermind who brought you Big Momma's House 2 and Malibu's Most Wanted. The guy doesn't even know who he's making this movie for. The rating may be PG, but you'll be sure to get jokes about morning wood and a ten-year-old who is horny for the Halls' Doublemint-twin daughters. I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes and saying that it's just a family movie where I can take my kids over the holiday. Except it's not. The screening I attended had kids and their parents and the biggest laughs where when Danny DeVito fell down. Kids can't argue with slapstick. That's why Home Alone exists. But when kids will enjoy far superior films like Words by |