On the third day of Christmas my rancid ex gave to me Christmas with the Kranks.

Slick Dungeon here, still stuck in a dungeon, still slogging through the worst of the Christmas movies available.

Christmas with the Kranks is about a couple of empty nesters whose daughter has just left to go to Peru to work in the peace corps. The dad played by Tim Allen has decided to skip Christmas and take his wife on a cruise to the Caribbean instead. Most of the movie is spent watching the neighbors, co-workers and non-profit organizations harrass the Kranks, trying to get them to do the same thing they have done for years and years. But surprise, surprise, the daughter comes home and the neighbors and the Kranks have to get together and whip up a bunch of Christmas for her asap. Everyone comes together and all is saved. Yay!

I have a few questions

• Mr. Krank pretty much wants to opt out of everything Christmas because doing so would be cheaper and they can afford the cruise easier. He is harrassed relentlessly for this. Here is what I don’t get. Why can’t Krank do the non-monetary things like putting up decorations and attend parties but not pay for gifts and stuff? Who made these rules?
• Also, why can’t the neighbors let up? Seems really out of the holiday spirit to hound people with intense peer pressure to conform.
• Why didn’t the Krank parents tell their daughter that they were going to go on a cruise? I mean the whole problem at the end could be solved with a single phone call placed a week earlier.
• Here’s one thing that bothered me to no end. There are some Cub scouts and their leader who are selling Christmas trees. They expect Krank to buy the same kind of tree as last year but Krank doesn’t want to. So they go away but when Krank needs a tree the scouts try to upsell him by a huge margin. This is extremely un-scoutlike behavior. How did the Boy Scouts allow people in their official uniforms to be portrayed like that?!
• There were two instances of people getting electrocuted in a humorous manner. I know that has been done to death but I could have used more of it in this film.
• The neighbors in this movie are so nuts, how does anyone decide to live there? If you don’t do everything you did the year previously you are dead to them. I think I would take my Christmas cookies and go live somewhere else.
• The daughter is fawned over throughout the movie but we barely see her. Why is she worth all the trouble to these neighbors who clearly don’t like anyone doing anything they deem unusual?
• What’s so wrong about going on a cruise for Christmas anyway? It’s like they think he is a Satan worshipper because of it. Back off people.

This movie should have been funnier but none of it quite works. It just comes off as kind of mean and troubling to me.

This movie is about a guy wanting to get away for the holidays. I have an antidote for that. Watch Home Alone to see just how bad things can go when you do leave. It’s much funnier and is rewatchable for a reason

Merrily Yours,

Slick Dungeon