Dubb Watches & Reviews Holiday Stuff

[Dubb]

Today's movie is another Tim Allen Christmas movie. And unfortunately as fondly as I look back on The Santa Claus, this one much less so.

The movie in question is Christmas with the Kranks (2004). I can actually remember seeing this in theaters with my girlfriend at the time. We had actually paid to go see, I believe it was The Incredibles, and for some reason, we changed our minds and decided to go see what would surely be another Tim Allen Christmas classic.

What a dreadful mistake.

I believe it almost became the first movie I had ever walked out of. But for some reason we actually stayed through the end.

There's very little redeeming things about this movie. All the characters act like awful people in general. The townspeople's obsession with harassing the Kranks is borderline psychotic while the Kranks rubbing their "skipping Christmas" agenda in everyone's face is just obnoxious. There's no real plot to this...I mean technically yes there is but it's pretty nonsensical and illogical and then the final act is just incredibly dumb.

And for some reason I've watched this movie multiple times. (My wife actually likes it...yikes).

It's still better than Jingle All The Way 2...I'll give it that. So let's go with 3/10.

Coming up...some things I actually enjoy!

 

[Wiseman]

Kind of forgot about this movie. And realized Tim Allen really hit up that Christmas movie cash after Home Improvement. Good for him, and pinkies up!

 

[Dubb]

Didn't realize I had gone this long without responding. Let's do some rapid fire things.

Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022): Not going to lie, I'm a sucker for a holiday special. I like the shorter format of being like 40-60 minutes for a nice concise little story. I'm also a big fan of the MCU, and especially the Guardians. Add in a dose of Kevin Bacon and this one really hit me in all the right spots. It's nice to have something in the MCU that is so low stakes and just some light-hearted fun. And I never would've thought in the mid 00's that Batista would be one of the most enjoyable things in something like this but Drax and Mantis are so much fun in this. I can definitely envision this being something I come back to year after year. Going all the way up to a 9/10.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966): Speaking of holiday specials. This is probably the quintessential Christmas special to me. Even more so than something like Rudolph and Charlie Brown's Christmas, both I also hold highly but this is one that just absolutely has to be watched every year. I know I was harsh on the live action version earlier but part of it is just because of how much I love the original animated version. The story is classic and it's so concise with its short run time. It hits everything it needs to hit. I gotta give this my first 10/10.

The Santa Clause 2 (2002): As much as I enjoy the original Santa Clause, I think I have only watched both sequels probably once. I barely remembered anything about this one to be honest besides Elizabeth Mitchell being in it. Ahead of the Santa Clauses TV series on Disney+, I gave this a watch. This actually had more going for it than I remembered. At first anyway. Tim Allen being able to play the dictator-esque evil Toy Santa was actually pretty funny and I think the whole start to the story of Scott Calvin/Santa having to find a wife before Christmas was off to a great start. The early portions of him building up the relationship with Carol and him using up the allotment of magic he had to do so was good... but then it's like they needed to rush to the third act and wrap things up. The fact that he used up his magic had zero repercussions and then they pretty mush rushed the final act. The end game with Carol was also super rushed. Definitely doesn't live up to the original to me but it was probably better than I remembered so I slot it at 6/10.

The Santa Clauses (2022): And speaking of that franchise, I'll throw in some comments about the new series but I won't go into too many specifics as its still relatively new and don't want to spoil anything to those who might want to watch but haven't yet. I was a little unsure about what to think of this going in because so many of these nostalgia reboots ultimately underwhelm and/or disappoint. And the first episode definitely made me wonder about the series but ultimately I think each episode got better and I really liked the direction they ended up taking Kal Penn's character. After the first like 3 episodes I decided to wait until all 6 episodes had been release because the way the episodes were flowing felt more like a movie being broken up into 6 parts than a true episodic event, so it was much better to just binge it, imo. I'd rank this higher than the sequels but not quite as high as the original - it was good and yeah it's got its cheesiness but a lot of the nostalgia moments definitely worked for me. 6.75/10

 

[Chris]

Animated Grinch is the GOAT