Cleveronix
A different way of telling a story
Derry Herrera
Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
Philippa
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
mcnuttcarolyn
This movie is way under-rated in my opinion. It is fun holiday fare. No, it's not Little Women or Miracle on 34th street. It's more along the lines of Home Alone. Ben Affleck is charming and the whole cast is wonderful. If you are looking for a funny holiday movie with a sweet message, it's worth a view. Christina Appelgate, not typically my favorite, is very enjoyable and I always love seeing David Selby (Falcon Crest and Dark Shadows) in anything. The premise hooks you from the beginning, a cad of a guy finds himself alone at Christmas and decides to go back to his boyhood home and rent the family for the holidays in an attempt to woo his girlfriend back. what happens is a lesson about life, love and family with some hilarity along the way.
Python Hyena
Surviving Christmas (2004): Dir: Mike Mitchell / Cast: Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Christina Applegate, Josh Zuckerman: Standard Christmas comedy about family. Ben Affleck wishes to rekindle childhood memories but another family now lives in his childhood home so he pays the family to represent his family and reprise old memories. Good idea but structured like a sitcom with sets to match. Directed by Mike Mitchell whose best element is the character development, which is surprisingly good. Affleck is surprisingly funny as he attempts to reprise old memories and driving this family up the wall in the process. James Gandolfini steals the film as his hired father who grows rapidly impatient with the whole ordeal. Catherine O'Hara is terrific as his hired mother in a role that is perfect for her comic talent. Their marriage is in trouble so Affleck makes her an offer that lands her in hot water. The only real weak character is the daughter, played by Christina Applegate whom Affleck will fall for. Since he doesn't have a sister, she will be placed as the maid. Applegate has great comic potential but her role here is too obvious. Josh Zuckerman plays Applegate's brother who will get lured into the predictable charade. The film's purpose is to celebrate family and surviving each other long enough to remember what it is all about. Score: 5 ½ / 10
Steve Pulaski
Just two years ago, in my review of Deck the Halls, I stated, "This ranks up with the 2006 remake of A year Without Santa Claus for the worst holiday film ever made. I would name this #2 in the list of the worst of its kind." Now I have just seen Surviving Christmas, a film that collectively beats both films to that title.This is a trite, extremely uninspired trudge through the gutter of cinema. An affront to any and all comedy, Christmas cheer, and sentimentality. A film so poor that the phrase "guilty pleasure" is not an excuse to favor or support it. This is an obnoxiously poor film with an obnoxiously ignorant character locked in an obnoxiously contrived setup.We follow our alleged protagonist Drew Latham (Ben Affleck), an insufferable, unremarkable man, with no family, no close friends, and a girlfriend who breaks up with him minutes into the film. He is told by his long-suffering shrink to return to his childhood home before Christmas, jot down a list of "grievances," and is instructed to burn the paper in front of his home immediately.So he does. But in the middle of the exercise, he is clobbered on the head with a shovel by the homeowner, Tom Valco (James Gandolfini) and is taken inside. Soon enough, he wakes up and states that his act wasn't a malicious one and is politely granted a request to tour the house and meet the rest of the most uninteresting family in the world. The tour consists of Drew tirelessly revisiting members, including "the squeaky stair" (with all the things Affleck regrets, that scene should be number one on his list).After the tour, Drew makes a generous proposal: $250,000 if he can stay at the house, be treated like the son of the family (mostly trying to replicate his own), and be a part of childish activities galore.What a horribly unrealistic, muddled mess this soon becomes. A confused, unfocused Christmas picture, likely to bring as much cheer to the average person as a paper-cut. Things get stranger when we see Drew try to strike up a relationship with the Valco's daughter, Alicia (Christina Applegate), who returns home for the holidays. If there was anything this film could do to be (a) more generic and (b) even less interesting it has just done so.Now this is where the film royally misfires; its direction and tone haphazardly tries to touch every cliché direction the storyline can possibly crank out. From the schmaltzy love-story, the sentimentally-challenged writing, the goofy slapstick, to the bittersweet finale, which turns the "bitter" aspect into a shockingly appalling blandness, it is a wonder what the crew was even thinking.Take a scene about hallway through the film where the teen boy who lives at the house is gleefully browsing the internet for juvenile porn when the "grandfather" (a random old man, played to Drew's girlfriend as his real grandfather) waltzes upstairs to see what the boy is doing. He sees the scantily clad Asian woman on screen and tries to find out from the boy how to work the computer so he can continue to browse the site. A few clicks later, and they discover a picture of the boy's mother in a rather explicit pose, which leads to the grandfather asking, "can you print this?" It isn't long after that the mother gives Drew's girlfriend, grandfather, and the rest of the fake family a tour of the house, which leads to them walking up to the room to find the son staring shocked and dismayed at the explicit photo. Cue obligatory scene of shock followed by a zinger by one of the characters.It's completely unorthodox that the writers of this picture want this to be see as a cheerful Christmas film when they not only include an overwrought, ignorant main character trapped in a senseless screenplay of errors and fuel the remainder with stupidity and scenes of unnecessary nature. Surviving Christmas was released in October 2004, about a month before holiday films are known to begin their run in theaters. If that isn't a sign of the studio giving up on their own picture, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better, more blunt example.Starring: Ben Affleck, Christina Applegate, and James Gandolfini. Directed by: Mike Mitchell.
vincentlynch-moonoi
Early on, Ben Affleck made a few entertaining pictures. Then he lapsed into a period where he made some real stinkers. Recently he has begun to come out of that period, and may yet again have a truly successful screen career.This film is not exactly a stinker, but it's like milk that is past the due date...not too far from going bad. If you expect a lot out of this flick, you'll probably be disappointed. Looks more like a TV movie from the Hallmark Channel than a big screen production...although at least a Hallmark television movie would have a little more heart to it. I watched this film on cable because the cable listing description described Affleck as "utterly charming" in this film...but it also had only 1 star...so I was prepared.There were possibilities here. A young ad exec has lost his sense of wonderment of Christmas and family, breaks up with his girl, and ends up looking forward to Christmas alone. He tries to find friends to share the holiday with him, but none want him. No wonder! Then he gets the idea from another minor acquaintance who also doesn't want him, to write his regrets on a piece of paper and then burn them at a place that was special to him. So he goes to the house he grew up in, gets clobbered by the low-class present owner (James Gandolfini), but ends up renting the family and house for an outrageous sum of money. Of course, the family is a bunch of weirdos and he even has to rent a grandfather. We learn that even as a child, Afflect had lousy and lonely Christmases. Of course, Affleck begins falling in love with a somewhat cynical (but at least realistic) Christina Applegate...perhaps the only actor in the film that showed some talent here. But this Affleck's girlfriend and her rich family shows up, and another whole set of somewhat predictable disasters occur.Affleck utterly charming here? I think not. Gandolfini shows the talent he did on cable drama? No.Okay, so I watched it once, but never again. There's just no...well, very little heart to this film. Someone decided they had to make a Christmas flick...they did...it failed...and this is the result. I'd rather meet one of Scrooge's ghosts than meet up with this film again.
