MOVIE: Christmas With The Kranks

The same day that I finished Skipping Christmas, we watched the movie version: Christmas with the Kranks starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis & Dan Aykroyd. Click here to view the movie trailer. To be totally honest, I enjoyed the movie more than the book & I thought they did an excellent job converting the book to the movie screen. They did change a few things in the movie version but the changes were to enhance the humour and expand the story. For the fun of it, I checked out reviews on Amazon UK vs Amazon USA and the reviews are all over the place so you either love this movie or despise it - you can decide for yourself as I am rarely influenced by the reviews. Since I have already explained the story in my previous post BOOK: Skipping Chritmas by John Grisham, I will not bore you with repetitious details.

We both enjoyed it equally and experienced a few laughing fits that made our stomachs ache. I also cried at the end - I mean full sobbing tears but this is not unusual for me, as some of you might know. Some define it as "cheezy" but in my humble opinion ... most, if not all, Christmas movies are known to be "cheezy". I found the story line was ideal for a movie since the basic idea is somewhat fresh & original for a holiday story. Since humour is my all time favourite form of entertainment, I enjoyed the funny bits that built up the characters and the setting of the story. This is not really a holiday movie for families with small children because it does not include much of the usual Christmas "fantasy" that exists in traditional holiday films. In defense of "Christmas with the Kranks", there is one special character, who appears in the end, that does stir our "imagination" but I suspect that most viewers missed this subtle character's role in the movie. Thus resulting in the poor reviews - they simply did NOT get it. I would recommend this film for those adults wanting a light Christmas movie with some humour that differs from the usual movies that we have been watching over the last 20 years.