November 18, 2004
By Matt Savelloni
“FAMILY LOVE IS MESSY, CLINGING, AND OF AN ANNOYING AND REPETITIVE PATTERN, LIKE BAD WALLPAPER.” – PJ O’Rourke
Locating, reading and reviewing source material for upcoming films can sometimes be a struggle. At times, I am forced to read works I would never dare crack open on a bet. However, this week offered perhaps the greatest test of my patience for ineptitude. John Grisham’s SKIPPING CHRISTMAS is a literary miscreant that portends an impending cinematic catastrophe.
I am not a Grisham fan. And I have another confession to make: I detest Christmas. Oh, not the holiday itself, but the commercialized, sentimental horseshit I have to endure from now until the Bowl Games on Jan. 1. Nevertheless, I ventured into SKIPPING CHRISTMAS with an open mind, assuming that the threadbare novel couldn’t possibly harm my psyche.
I was wrong. One of the most hackneyed excursions I’ve ever encountered, SKIPPING CHRISTMAS is marketing exploitation at its most vampiric. Breaking from his lawyers-on-the-run formula, Grisham attempts to satirize just the type of Christmas crap I am grousing about. However, within wit do not Grisham’s talents lie. His obvious sense of humor falls painfully flat. His protagonists, Luther and Nora Krank – as in cranky, get it? GET IT? – are tired falsifications of suburban bores. I hated them by the fifth page. After spending a little more time with them, I hated them more. By the third act, I found myself hoping for an invading horde of killer elves.
In setting up the Kranks as atypical rural rubes embittered and combative over the sudden departure of their too-cute daughter, Grisham undermines their decision to skip Christmas. Have all of their previous holiday celebrations been merely an act, making them delusional? Or were they just locking in step to routine seasonal cheer, in which case they would have been shallower than two-dimensional stick figures? By neglecting to craft full-blooded main characters with believable and non-selfish motivations, Grisham saddles SKIPPING CHRISTMAS with a cursory mien impossible to shake. In other words, without a reason to care about the Kranks, readers will find little enthusiasm for the novel as a whole.
“YOU CAN'T FAKE QUALITY ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN FAKE A GOOD MEAL.” – William S. Burroughs
Last week, we reveled in Chris Van Allsburg’s treasure, THE POLAR EXPRESS, which succeeds through sheer simplicity, building a modest illustration into a full-blown exhibit. Van Allsburg fulfills every potential of his story, concentrating on character to lend meaning to circumstance. Grisham takes exactly the opposite approach, offering thumbnail sketches while preserving the greatest detail for their exploits. By the time the nosy neighbors come scurrying around, indignant at the Kranks’ decision to ditch Christmas, the reader is smashed under a tidal wave of caricature. People just do not behave like this, and if they do, they act in a more believable manner. Great satire requires realistic underpinnings to exaggerate the faults of its subject matter. It’s hard to determine exactly what Grisham targets in SKIPPING CHRISTMAS: the joyless Kranks, the shallow commerciality of the holiday, the Stepford-like adherence to pat tradition. Although these are worthwhile and meaty scenarios, they are tangential to the rote plot and set pieces, yuletide whiz-bang to distract us from the nonexistent story and the character outlines drifting through it.
The saddest part is that SKIPPING CHRISTMAS – at least in concept – bears the potential fruit for a wonderful black comedy, something Joseph Heller might have scribed in a bah-humbug mood. Instead, it plays nice, the author too respectful to really rip Christmas a new one. By the time the inevitable pathos arrives, we are so bored with the Kranks and their pompous community that trying to relate to their anemic arcs is an exercise in futility. The best thing about SKIPPING CHRISTMAS is that it does not heap length upon injustice; the misery is over not long after it begins. Other than that ignoble virtue, this product of the Grisham machine reads more like something the Grinch might have left under the tree before being redeemed by Cindy Lou-Who.
“I'VE NEVER KNOWN A REALLY CALCULATED ARTISTIC DECISION.” –John Goodwin
Until now, John. The forthcoming CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS is a shining example of Hollywood marketing exploitation. The book was written by Grisham, the screenplay barfed up by Chris Columbus with Tim Allen under the Fellini-like guidance of Joe Roth. Is there anybody on this list that doesn’t scream lowbrow, white bread, mass-market vapidity? Roth has always been a mass producer of mall-lite flicks with one glaring exception: as uncredited executive producer on Cronenberg’s DEAD RINGERS. How this minor masterpiece is wedged amidst a filmography made up of YOUNG GUNS, THE JERKY BOYS and HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE and their ilk is a question perhaps only Stephen Hawking can answer. Is it even remotely possible that the man whose previous directorial efforts include REVENGE OF THE NERDS II and the loathsome AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS can elicit something other than middling chuckles from the EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND retirement population?
Definitely not with Chris Columbus as his screenwriter. I feel safe saying Columbus has never been associated with a good film beyond two very early hits: GREMLINS and THE GOONIES. Since then, when he’s not catering to the sitcom crowd with HOME ALONE, MRS. DOUBTFIRE and NINE MONTHS, he’s either wallowing in clammy melodrama like STEPMOM and the unintentionally hilarious BICENTENNIAL MAN or bastardizing the glorious charm and drollness of J.K. Rowling into turgid, overlong special effects snoozers.
Enough. I can’t even summon the energy to write about Tim Allen, a man who is definitely funny. He has killer timing and expert delivery but somehow shoehorns those genuine comedic skills into craven slapstick. There has been a spate of Christmas movies recently, from SURVIVING CHRISTMAS to THE POLAR EXPRESS to CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS. It seems as if the distributors are trying to get them out of the way as fast as possible. I guess it’s like opening that present from your grandmother Christmas morning. You just know it’s just another god-awful sweater but you have to endure its arrival before moving on to better gifts you will remember fondly. THE KRANKS starts next week…
Merry fucking Christmas.
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
