Synopsis of the DVD Movie: Surviving Christmas

Drew Latham is an executive leading an empty, shallow life with only wealth on his side. Facing another lonely Christmas ahead, Drew wants to revisit his old childhood home and possibly relive some old holiday memories. But when he arrives, he finds that the house he was raised in is no longer the home he grew up in. Inhabited by another family, Drew offers a nice financial reward that has the family ringing. But is Drew's generous cash offer only the beginning of an annoying visitor whose a little too overeager to celebrate Christmas?

Halloween hasn't arrived yet and we're already getting the first holiday film of the season. Despite opening to the tune of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," the timing of Surviving Christmas could not feel worse. We haven't even set our clocks back, and the trees haven't lost their leaves, but we're supposed to believe that Christmas is right around the corner? Fat chance Santa -- this film won't even survive long enough to see turkey day. But, it's just that kind of attitude that makes this spiteful little movie work.

Ben Affleck plays the lonely but wealthy media marketing executive Drew Latham. He prefers to ditch his family this holiday and take his materialistic girlfriend Missy (Jennifer Morrison) on a first-class trip to Fiji. Missy emphatically rejects his offer and dumps him for wanting to take her away from her family at Christmas. At the advice of Missy's quack psychologist, Drew's therapy is to write down all of his grievances with his family and burn them in front of his childhood home. While this ridiculously manufactured scenario presents a good treatment option for Drew, to the rest of us, it reeks of rotten eggnog.

Drew doesn't just burn his grievances on the doorstep - he blazes his own trail inside the house for the holiday. Drew offers residents Tom and Christine Valco (James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara) a preposterous $250,000 to allow him to re-enact his childhood memories with Tom and Christine serving as his parents. Once the Valcos sign the contract, a smug Drew is permitted to make wholesale changes for this family's holiday: The Valcos' son Brian (Josh Zuckerman) is evicted from his room so Drew can sleep in his old bed; Drew hires a local actor to portray his grandpa and move in with the Valcos; and Drew relegates their daughter Alicia (Christina Applegate) to maid status because he didn't have a sister growing up. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

In Surviving, traditional happy family events like picking out a Christmas tree, or singing Christmas carols are drastically degraded into sardonic squabbles. At his lowest point, Drew draws up scripts for each family member to re-enact so that they do not deviate from the Leave It To Beaver-style Christmas Drew has fantasized about. Unfortunately for Drew, this holiday is closer to a run-in with the Sopranos than the Cleavers.

Even though all holiday cheer is bagged for crass jokes, nasty pranks, and indecent actions, Surviving works on a small level as a precursor to the entire pre-holiday hullabaloo. Director Mike Mitchell's (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo) film is not meant to evoke a warm and fuzzy feeling. It's a satirical look at the ludicrous lengths many Americans will go to ensure (or buy, in Drew's case) a perfect holiday. Christmas is months away, but now is the time for frantic shoppers to be pushing through crowds at the mall with frustration levels on high. Surviving would fail to hit its mark the closer we get to the holidays, and that is why we're getting it now. It shouldn't be around come Christmas to spoil our eventual good cheer.

The film is certainly not without its problems - the plot meanders nowhere and it's dominated by obnoxious, over-the-top performances. But the writing is crisp, and the insults are fun. It's certainly not the best way to spend the holiday - good thing it's only October.

Movie Review of Surviving Christmas

Surviving Christmas is not going to set your mind at ease.

This crass, sloppy comedy is Ben Affleck's fifth consecutive lousy movie (assuming you're not one of the seven people who rather liked Jersey Girl). With nothing on the horizon but Elektra, a spinoff of the decidedly Daredevil, and Man About Town, from the guy behind HBO's execrable The Mind of the Married Man, Ben Affleck had better hope Quentin Tarantino is still in the business of rescuing forgotten careers in 10 or so years.

The long-delayed Christmas finally began filming in January 2003, which, you might recall, was right when the media tsunami known as Bennifer finally imploded. This could explain why Ben Affleck appears to be in a state of delirious, unhinged mania in every scene. Technically, he's playing an adolescent-minded ad exec named Drew who must learn the true meaning of Christmas, or family, or whatever. But you get the sense Ben Affleck isn't acting at all, and not just because this crumpled wrapping paper of a script doesn't draw a single character with any actual characteristics. He simply looks like a man trapped, unclear of how his personal and professional life has devolved into such a mess. To say that this has anything to do with the role he's playing is to give the movie far too much credit.

Director Mike Mitchell, whose sole prior credit was the timeless masterpiece Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, clearly has no idea what to do with the scattershot screenplay, written by no less than four people. The basic plot involves Drew, dumped by his girlfriend after committing the grievous error of giving her first-class plane tickets to Fiji for Christmas, deciding he has to let go of his past. He travels to his childhood home, and through a chain of events that would be baffling were it not so meaningless, rents out the family living there to help him re-create an idyllic holiday.

James Gandolfini, best known as Tony Soprano, plays Tom, the bearded, gruff patriarch of the rented family. The actor reportedly refused to leave his trailer on the Chicago set until script problems were resolved, but they must have gotten him out somehow, because both he and those problems appear in the finished product. Meanwhile, Catherine O'Hara (A Mighty Wind) is the frazzled mom, and looks suitably humiliated by the disaster of filmmaking surrounding her. Christina Applegate, playing Affleck's unlikely love interest, also maintains a modicum of dignity.

Remarkably, Surviving Christmas doesn't even attempt to be sweet in the ways you'd expect. More remarkably, it's actually worse than Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, which boasted a similar plot. Ben Affleck's overgrown frat-boy demeanor has never felt more tedious; at this point, Christmas is the last thing he needs to worry about surviving.

"Surviving Christmas" has a ludicrous plot. Drew (Ben Affleck) is a lonely rich guy who has no place to go on Christmas.

His girlfriend wants a commitment, doesn't want to fly to Fiji for the holidays, and tells him Christmas is a time for family. Their rapid-fire exchange at the beginning of the film sets the tone of the movie. Their exchange also begs the question, if family is so important at Christmas, and if the girlfriend's ready to make the leap into marriage, why doesn't she simply invite him over to her house for the holidays? That doesn't happen so Drew's left going through his phone book and calling people he barely knows to try and finagle his way into their holiday celebrations. His phone calls lead nowhere (which is in keeping with this movie) so he packs up and takes off for his childhood home.

Arriving at his old homestead, which is now occupied by the Valco family, he acts crazy and gets bonked over the head by the family's snow shovel-wielding father (James Gandolfini). Coming to inside the house without even a scratch - or a headache - Drew offers the Valcos $250,000 to act like his family and do all the holly jolly Christmas stuff he says he remembers doing when he was just a kid. $250,000? Think about it. A quarter of a million dollars to stay a few days, sing carols, dress in red and green, trim a Christmas tree, and other such holiday happenings. Why does he offer them such a huge amount? $250,000 is just way too bizarre an amount to even be believable in a goofy Christmas movie. This guy can't find one person to spend Christmas with yet he has $250,000 in expendable cash just burning a hole in his pocket. Okay.

Anyway, so let's say you get over the fact this extremely rich guy is buying a family for Christmas. And let's just say you don't even care the 'son addicted to computer porn' subplot's just silly. This movie does all that one better by introducing a daughter, Alicia (Christina Applegate), who returns home unexpectedly and is sucked into Drew's warped holiday fantasy. Alicia's arrival leads to the whole 'she hates him/she loves him' game. Reintroduce the girlfriend who discovers she really needs Drew in her life after she receives a Cartier bracelet and you've got jolly good holiday fun. Or not.

Some scenes do work. I particularly liked a scene at the dinner table where the family read from scripts to appease Drew. Because Drew didn't have a sister, Alicia was referred to in the script as the maid. That was cute. Of course, if you followed that same plot line, it didn't hold much water. Drew didn't have a brother yet he never made the Valco's son play the part of butler or chauffeur. The scenes that don't work fail so horribly it destroys any goodwill created by the scenes that made you laugh. Don't even get me started about Drew and Alicia's shared cold, which came on over the course of one toboggan ride and seemed to vanish just as quickly.

Conjure up an image of a good Christmas comedy movie. Got it? Did Ben Affleck's mug play a prominent role in your mental picture? Probably not as Affleck's not known for doing comedy. With "Surviving Christmas," it's apparent why 'Ben Affleck' and 'comedy' (at least of the intentional variety) aren't normally said in the same sentence.