2*FR: Surviving Christmas

SURVIVING CHRISTMAS (2004)
Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Christina Applegate, Catherine O'Hara
Directed by Mike Mitchell


Surviving Christmas was deemed so bad that it was released in October and turned around to be on DVD before you even noticed it had tanked at the box office. Picking this up used at a video store for $7.95 wasn't so bad - I'm a big Gandolfini fan, it's the Christmas season, and as the movie will tell you, "It's fun just to buy shit sometimes."

This movie received a royal shitting-on, and in many ways totally deserved it. The plot - a young millionaire rents a family for Christmas after his girlfriend rejects his offer to go to Fiji - is profoundly silly. The writing is atrocious, as they clearly are lacking, you know, the script. The film is a series of largely ridiculous scenes strung together to amount to an hour and a half of film time.

Yet, it's kind of funny. It's funnier than Bad Santa, for instance. It's funnier than Spies Like Us. It's funnier than Captain Ron. Ben Affleck ends up playing a moderately insane but well-meaning rich schmuck well enough that you can buy the character - almost, anyway. Gandolfini is solid as Tom Valco, the patriarch of the dysfunctional family that Affleck spends Christmas with. Christina Applegate recovers from an out-of-place unfunny performance in Anchorman to be as moderately charming as she can be. You've got a character named Doo-Dah and a character named Doo-Dah understudy. Affleck is as funny as he can be under the circumstances, and he has good chemistry with Gandolfini.

The whole film is preposterous, which makes it oddly compelling, featuring a tacked-on romance between Affleck and Applegate that somehow comes off rather cute. The movie hits rock bottom when Christine Valco (O'Hara) goes to a photo shoot on Drew's (Affleck) dime, after a sudden private announcement from Tom to Drew that he and Christine will be getting a divorce.

The characters are ridiculously underwritten, featuring Gandolfini and O'Hara not even bothering to do anything more than play Tony Soprano (albeit a goofier version) and Mickey Crabbe. The writing, again, is terrible. The whole thing seems like improv - some of it floats, some of it doesn't.

With this movie, you go through about an hour and 15 minutes of completely stupid, sometimes funny shit to actually get to what the real story is, and as predictable as it seems, by then you're expecting Drew to say he had to rent a family because his was killed by circus elephants, not the relatable reason he has. And at the end of it all, you're left with an ending befitting a charming Christmas movie.

Now, I'm not saying it's a legitimately good movie, but I think time will be kind to Surviving Christmas. This is not Swept Away we're talking about. It's not unwatchably, unforgivably horrible. It's just not as good as it should have been with this cast. But not having much in the way of a script can do that to a movie, I guess.

-SC