Drew Latham is a wealthy marketing executive who is fed up with spending Christmas alone every year. But the Valco family - parents Tom and Christine, and their two kids Brian and Alicia - who live in Drew's old family home, have each other. When Drew's idea of spending Christmas in Fiji is turned down by his girlfriend, he .. Read more
| Starring | Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Christina Applegate, Catherine O'Hara |
|---|---|
| Director | Mike Mitchell |
| Genres | Comedy, Family |
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Drew Latham is a wealthy marketing executive who is fed up with spending Christmas alone every year. But the Valco family - parents Tom and Christine, and their two kids Brian and Alicia - who live in Drew's old family home, have each other. When Drew's idea of spending Christmas in Fiji is turned down by his girlfriend, he decides to revisit his old neighbourhood in an attempt to muster up some feelings of seasonal cheer. The Valcos' life of suburban tranquillity is rudely interrupted when Drew turns up on their doorstep and offers them 250,000 U.S. Dollars if they'll let him stay with them over the holiday period. A lawyer swiftly draws up a contract, with the main stipulation stating the family must provide Drew with a sense of 'Yuletide glee.' What could be easier than that? Well, quite a lot it seems, as the unenthusiastic group is dragged through the seasonal mire by the demanding Drew. Eventually the tension turns to laughter, however, and family matters take a turn for the better as director Mike Mitchell ('Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo') brings 'Surviving Christmas' to a poignant close. With Tom and Christine patching up their marital problems by using Drew as a conduit for their troubles, and daughter Alicia developing a blossoming romance with the now-welcome house guest, Drew manages to inadvertently trigger the seasonal joy he'd been trying so hard to discover.
| Starring | Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Christina Applegate, Catherine O'Hara, Josh Zuckerman, Bill Macy, Daniel Panabaker, Danielle Panabaker, Bryan Fisher |
|---|---|
| Director | Mike Mitchell |
| Studio | UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK VIDEO RENTAL |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 27 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Comedy, Family |
| Language | DVD: English |
| Dubbed | German |
| Hearing-impaired | English |
| Subtitles | DVD: German |
| Released | DVD: 07 Nov 2005 Production year: 2004 |
| Format | DVD |
Former hotshot actor Ben Affleck continues his career slide with this pitiful festive comedy. Here he plays rich advertising executive Drew Latham, who finds himself dumped by his tradition-obsessed girlfriend when she's denied Christmas with his family (he doesn't seem to have one). As a result, Latham returns to his former home where he pays the blue-collar Valco family that now lives there to let him spend the holiday period with them as their son. Cue a mess of clichés, pratfalls and limp jokes that feels like National Lampoon at its worst. Although Affleck has proven himself an able comic in the past, here his performance consists of shouting continually while wearing a ridiculous grin. Even co-stars James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara as the Valco parents, who at least realise less is more, cannot rescue the movie.
At what moment, exactly, did Ben Affleck strip himself of all credibility? Was it back in 1998, after the... read more on Time Out
I am sorry but I had to switch the film off half of the way through. I like Gandolfini and christmas but Ben Affleck trying to be funny! No it does not work. Please avoid like the plague. Bzz
a very good film and very funny
"Boring, complacent and criminally lucky to have got away with everything so far." That was David Thomson's scathing verdict on Ben Affleck in his "Biographical Dictionary of Film" in 2004. It was Ben's "annus horribilis": the year that his planned wedding to J-Lo fell apart. The year that saw him bounce back from the mortifying Gigli debacle with two more back-to-back duds: Surviving Christmas and Jersey Girl. He was considered such box-office poison his cameo in Elektra wound up on the... Read more