"Surviving Christmas" kicks off with all the traditional holiday clichés of sleighbells jingling, city streets bustling and Christmas trees twinkling in the park.
"It's the most wonderful time of the year," we're told.
This opening montage concludes, however, with a depressed grandmother putting her head into the oven, right next to the frowny-faced gingerbread men she just finished icing.
It's a clever and comic juxtaposition: Deconstructing our favorite holiday images like that.
It's a device director Mike Mitchell should have used throughout "Surviving Christmas," a ho-hum film that quickly digresses from its sprightly beginning into an unfunny take on all the usual holiday dreck.
Ben Affleck stars as Drew Latham, a lonely millionaire who offers a suburban Chicago family $250,000 to let him spend Christmas in their home. There's a contract stipulating all the activities the uneager family is obligated to participate in, including tobogganing, caroling and Christmas tree shopping.
The family goes along with the deal and injects the holiday spirit into their otherwise lackluster holiday celebration.
It's never clear exactly why the shrewd businessman suddenly embraces the holidays so wholeheartedly. Although we know we'll get an explanation eventually, probably at an emotional Christmas revelation moment. The plot doesn't work because the situation is so absurd we have little reason to believe it.
As an actor, Affleck doesn't do much to help the film's credibility. "Obnoxiously toothy" is a phrase to best describe his performance. The actor mugs his goofy grin nonstop and unlike other annoying and unwanted characters (remember Will Ferrell in last year's "Elf?") Affleck is more abhorrent than endearing.
Poor Christina Applegate, as the family's older daughter, attempts to work with Affleck's schlock but in most of the duo's exchanges, her sassy sarcasm is wasted as the leading man continually drops the ball.
Ben Stiller or Ferrell could have spun some real holiday magic with the film's rather decent script. Affleck ambushes any of the film's potentially witty lines with his certain lack of comic instinct.
It's not hard to woo audiences into the holiday spirit and "Surviving Christmas" accomplishes that. The flick nails the festive atmosphere with the snow and the stockings and the "Yuletide glee."
But there are plenty of other films that accomplish this as well - and without the rotten annoyance of Affleck.
