ARTSETC.
Affleck’s new seasonal flop
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Also by David Steinhaus:
- Revealing secret sex lives of celebrities (February 1, 2005)
- Vanishing Point finds lyrical balance (January 19, 2005)
- Linkin Park, Jay-Z perfect collaborative records (December 3, 2004)
- Jimmy Eat World returns strong on Futures (November 4, 2004)
- Affleck's new seasonal flop (October 28, 2004)
Related Stories:
- Like spading dirt on a grave (September 8, 2003)
- A Christmas Story (December 11, 2003)
- Media magic during the holiday season (December 9, 2001)
- 'Gone Baby Gone' captures heart of tragedy (October 24, 2007)
- Hollywood knows Christmas despair (December 12, 2006)
by David Steinhaus
Thursday, October 28, 2004
I just couldn’t figure it out. No matter how hard I reasoned, the solution escaped me. Why would Dreamworks release a Christmas movie in October when there were two hefty holidays set to take place before anyone even thought about indentured elves making TiVo boxes and cashmere boxers? Sure, I had concocted a bevy of possible theories, but none were totally satisfactory.
Perhaps this cheery romp would be the film that would put the jet fuel back into Ben Affleck’s moped of a career. I optimistically hoped so, but doubt still remained.
Maybe they wanted to give the picture ample time to be recognized by the Oscar selection community. But when Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t even get nominated for “Jingle All the Way,” I say fat chance.
And then there was the one looming release-date explanation. The one that, as I gave the ticket girl my money and a wink, I refused to think of as an option. That’s right, the possibility that “Surviving Christmas,” a new comedy starring Ben Affleck and Christina Applegate, was so unwatchable that the studio didn’t really even care if they got the season right when they closed their eyes and tossed the film onto the fall calendar.
So the film played out and as the credits rolled, I had my answer. I sat stunned and in complete awe at what I had just seen. The movie was awkward, poorly paced and horribly unoriginal. Admittedly, I had laughed and cried, but I doubt that it was at the points that the filmmaker had intended me to. It was like watching a priest fall down during the benediction.
“Surviving Christmas” focuses on workaholic millionaire Drew Latham (Affleck) having no one to spend Christmas with, so he returns to his childhood home and pays the family currently living there to act as his family for the holiday. The premise was a bit sketchy the first time we saw it when it was called “Dickie Roberts: Child Star.”
A hopeless James Gandolfini and an inexpressive Catherine O’Hara parent the family. Gandolfini, who has won Emmys for his work on “The Sopranos,” has absolutely no reason for being in this movie. He plays his part dull and any grouchy character actor could have acted it. He seems as bored with the material as we would expect him to be. There are two children in the family. One is an Internet porn-obsessed teenage boy whose character will knock viewers down with its sheer originality. The daughter of the family is Christina Applegate who starts off as the voice of the audience, constantly proclaiming what a nutjob Affleck is and how the situation just doesn’t make any sense. Her character quickly performs an unexplained 180 and begins falling for the life-leasing goofball.
Insanity ensues throughout the film as Ben Affleck does his best to double-knot himself into Chevy Chase’s vacationing shoes. The family is pulled together and ripped apart multiple times as trees are trimmed, an actor is hired to play Drew’s grandpa, and Latham’s ex-girlfriend shows up. One of the biggest problems in this “comedy” is the fact that the writer seems to have forgotten to add jokes. There are a couple gags that invoke smirks from the audience, but the rest of the film delves into overly sentimental material that would make even the Lifetime Movie Network wish for a car chase. The script seems to be just an outline of what a comedy would consist of without any of the funny filler.
Towards the end of the picture, a few of the jokes begin to hit, but by that time everyone had given up on the movie. And, at that point, who knows if the line about making out with your sister was actually a hilarious piece or just slightly better than what we had been seeing. The rest of the time, the humor is so unoriginal that I kept expecting Affleck to get his head stuck in the turkey while looking for his watch. At least then, I guess, he wouldn’t be able to see the audience yawning.
Grade: C
Anonymous (October 28, 2004 @ 10:07am):
I know you. You know me. Nice joke about the benediction, and the photo used for the article is also comical. That's about it.
Anonymous (October 28, 2004 @ 12:17pm):
Christmans in October. Brilliant. Christina Applegate as a porn starved teen, brilliant (I know it was the boy teen that was that but I ignored that). This movie sounds like a winner, screw your C grade, it at least deserves a B/C, cause that is how college works. love,
your lovable Scottish Giant.
