Rating: Half-Full

 

Cast: Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd, Erik Per Sullivan, Cheech Marin, Jake Busey and M. Emmet Walsh

 

Director: Joe Roth

 

Writer: Chris Columbus

 

Based on: Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

 

Producers: Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus and Mark Radcliffe

 

Music by: John Debney

 

Oscar Nominations: 0

 

Rated: PG for brief language and suggestive content

 

Release Date: 11/24/04

 

Favorite Character: Vic Frohmeyer

 

Quote: “You’re skipping Christmas! Isn’t that against the law?”- Spike Frohmeyer

 

Fun Facts: When Nora drops the ham in the shopping center parking lot and the truck runs over it and she screams, you can hear the theme song from “Halloween” which Jamie Lee Curtis also starred in.

 

Julie Gonzalo, who plays Blair Krank, and Jamie Lee Curtis also star together in Freaky Friday (2003) in which Gonzalo plays the nemesis of Curtis’s daughter.

 

After the party had already started, the burglar who lies about having kids tries to escape from the upper floor and walks out onto the roof. Tim Allen’s character “Luther” yells “Hey, get down from there” which was similar to him yelling at Santa Claus on the roof in one scene from “The Santa Clause” starring Tim Allen.

 

The swimsuits the models are wearing in the advertisement for the cruise the Kranks are taking are the same ones Luther and Nora wear when they go tanning in the mall.

 

Summary: When their daughter left for the holidays, a couple decides to skip Christmas and take a cruise but things take an unexpected turn when their daughter announces that she’s coming home for Christmas.

 

The Review: I don’t see how it’s too funny but it is quite a holiday story. Perhaps a moral film for those who want to skip Christmas.