{"id":3939,"date":"2006-05-11T17:54:51","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T21:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=3939"},"modified":"2015-11-30T23:56:19","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T04:56:19","slug":"christmas-with-the-kranks-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/11\/christmas-with-the-kranks-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas with the Kranks (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Krank-christmas\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I used to say that I\u2019ve yet to see a film with Tim Allen that I found to be really bad. And somehow he rises to the occasion and stars in this. I should have kept my creed to myself. I got a big mouth. Either way, if you haven\u2019t caught on by now, \u201cChristmas with the Kranks\u201d is yet another really shitty \u201choliday\u201d film that\u2019s a mere vehicle that delights in being idiotic, moronic, and shamelessly flaunts its inherent lapses in logic peppered throughout the story.<\/p>\n

The Kranks\u2019 daughter Blair has left home, and their usual yuletideness is put on hold for a while. You see the Kranks devote themselves to charity and the holidays every year, and this year they want a break for themselves. And the neighbors despise that about them. Bad Kranks, how dare you. So, the neighbors snap in to action and protest, BUT<\/strong><\/em> their bitch daughter Blair has decided on the last minute to come home, and now they have to reverse their plans and get Christmas to their home leading to forced physical comedy, a lot of screaming, gross out gags, and the usual stuff we\u2019ve seen over a thousand times\u2026 oh yes, and it\u2019s a holiday film. I guess the first question I asked myself throughout the entire film, which I\u2019m sure you will: Why should these people care if the Kranks don\u2019t celebrate Christmas at all?<\/p>\n

Well, not even the writers seem to care, nor do they seem to want to convince us why these neighbors put up such a protest, but \u201cKranks\u201d really edges on utterly fascist (and not in the funny sense) which these upper class neighbors become enraged at the prospect of not celebrating a holiday. And The Kranks become that much more unlikable when they explain to the neighbors why, and feel they have to apologize for it. Hmm, a predominantly white neighborhood that strictly celebrates Christmas and becomes militant when two of its white residents refuse to celebrate Christmas for one year? The Red States would love this movie! I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cKranks\u201d is an idiotic and ugly \u201choliday\u201d film that has no real focus in sight, nor does it seem to know what sort of message it\u2019s attempting to get out to the audience. It\u2019s quite possibly one of the more artificial films to come along in a while, that talks down to its audience with a ridiculously condescending messy story. Roth\u2019s film is embarrassingly reliant on physical comedy and \u201cquirky misunderstandings\u201d that fuel the pointless unfunny blathering from beginning to end. Further pushing manufactured artificial holiday films seems to be what Hollywood is going for these days. With films like “Surviving Christmas” and now this, one can only wonder how much dumber these sorts of films will become. “Christmas with the Kranks” is a grueling experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to say that I\u2019ve yet to see a film with Tim Allen that I found to be really bad. And somehow he rises to the occasion and stars in this. I should have kept my creed to myself. I got a big mouth. Either way, if you haven\u2019t caught on by now, \u201cChristmas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[71,170,200,219,340,471],"class_list":["post-3939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adventure","tag-c","tag-christmas","tag-comedy","tag-family","tag-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17440,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939\/revisions\/17440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}