metromix.chicagotribune.com - : Chicago Tribune - Committed to withstanding the pressures of the season, the Kranks have their funny moments: Curtis is quite the physical comedian as she dives for her grocer's last honey ham, and Allen does a great bit on the perils of Botox as he and Nora beautify for their upcoming vacation. But while the film dangles in front of us the prospect of bona fide holiday cynicism and a non-responsive Secret Santa, it quickly reveals itself as just another scam in this sugar-shellacked season. more...
|
C
|
|
rogerebert.suntimes.com - : Chicago Sun-Times - The movie is not funny, ever, in any way, beginning to end. It's a colossal miscalculation. more...
|
C -
|
|
www.boston.com - : Boston Globe - The poisonous holiday ''comedy'' ''Christmas With the Kranks'' is a resolutely minor affair. That said, it nails a curiously widespread contradiction in modern American pop culture -- the desperate, self-negating need to be both cynical and sentimental at the same time. Here's a film that says Christmas is a sellout, that your neighbors are morons, and that suburbia is a playground of fascist conformity, and then it concludes that anyone who actually believes that is a heartless Scrooge. Confused yet? So's the movie. more...
|
D
|