Christmas with the Kranks

Christmas with the Kranks would love to be considered among the “twisted” holiday classics like Bad Santa and A Christmas Story but instead finds itself resting atop a junk heap that includes Jingle All the Way and Eight Crazy Nights. It takes a saccharine holiday message and coats it with total crap, getting the twisted-holiday-movie formula all screwed up. A little bit of evil crap is OK, but a film can’t be evil for most of its running time and then try to become It’s a Wonderful Life in the last 20 minutes without being discordant, unfunny and just plain rude. Not that Kranks is any good when it’s being evil, either.