Surviving Christmas [DVD] [2004] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

"Surviving Christmas" starts off as if it might actually be an edgy, black comedy about the holidays. Andy Williams sings "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" while we are treated to a montage of holiday suicides, including a grandmother type who bakes gingerbread cookies with frowning mouths before she puts her head in the oven. Given this rather intriguing introduction, you would reasonably be expecting a story about another potential holiday suicide, but it turns out that introduction has really nothing to do with the rest of the film. As soon as it is done (and well before the opening credits are over) we are introduced to Drew Latham (Ben Affleck), an advertising executive who is selling a client on the only way for people to endure their families during the holiday. It is a nice bit for establishing Drew's character, but it also sends the film on a detour that will last under the end credits.

When Drew wants to take his girlfriend (Jennifer Morrison) away for Christmas, this turns out to be the final straw in their relationship because she thinks people should spend the holidays with their family. Left alone, Drew discovers he has no place to go and spend Christmas. While visiting his childhood home, he comes up with the bright idea of paying the family that lives there $250,000 to pretend to be his family, at which point we know essentially what will happen in the rest of this movie as Drew and the Valcos become a "real" family.

The Valcos consist of father Tom (James Gandolfini), mother Christine (Catherine O'Hara), son Brian (Josh Zuckerman), and in case you were wondering who was going to be Drew's new girlfriend, daughter Alicia (Christina Applegate), who is smarter than the rest of the family put together, but unable to use that to her advantage. Despite being handsomely paid for this inconvenience, the Valcos tend to resist Drew's demands: wearing a Santa's hat or putting marshmallows in hot chocolate seems a reasonable request for one-tenth the sum they are being paid. But we have to establish different levels of tension between not only Drew and the Valcos, but between each of the Valcos as well so that Drew can fix them and make them all better and we can have a happy ending where God blesses them, every one.

The script bears the primary responsibility for "Surviving Christmas" not surviving until Christmas. The story is by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, who worked on the screenplay along with Jeffrey Ventimilia and Joshua Sternin. The former pair turn television sit coms into movies and the latter do television sit coms, which certainly explains why the bar was set low on this one. Since the script does not take advantage of having Gandolfini and O'Hara in the cast, it is not surprising that they come up with essentially nothing for Applegate (besides one small confession). By the time we get to this serious moment in this film, it is too little too late. Yes, it provides some notion of motivation for Drew's character, but if you look back at everything he has done previously in the film it is not justified by the revelation, which makes it no more a coherent part of the narrative than the opening montage.

I would still argue that Ben Affleck's best film was "Chasing Amy" and would continue to maintain that it was his performance that was the fatal flaw in "Gigli," although the movie has some choice moments. Given those oppositional poles "Surviving Christmas" would be my choice for the worst Ben Affleck movie to date, not so much because it is inherently bad, but more so because it is just such a waste of all of the cast members. If Drew's demands were more obnoxious or bizarre, then "Surviving Christmas" would have been a funnier movie. Jettisoning the suicide montage at the start would have made more sense, but finding a way to follow up on it would have made for a much better movie. Unfortunately, director Mike Mitchell ("Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo"), could not possibly know better.