Highly Overrated But Still Good

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Ben Affleck is a shallow millionaire ad executive dumped by his girlfriend just before Christmas. So he goes on a quest to revisit his past which means his childhood home and offers to pay the current owners $250,000 so they can pretend to be his family for Christmas.James Gandolfini is the reluctant father who is also having marital problems with his wife Catherine O'Hara. There is also a little brother and they even rope in a part time actor to play grandpa. Complications ensue when Affleck falls for Christina Applegate, the daughter who later turns up for Christmas with her family and then his ex turns up with her parents which means every one has to keep up the pretence for longer.It is a weird off beat premise, very silly but in essence the film is a farce but the actors take it all too seriously.

Drew Latham (Ben Affleck) is a lonely wealthy executive who tries to visit his childhood home. He finds the Valcos (James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Christina Applegate, Josh Zuckerman) living there now, and he pays them to have a fun family Christmas with.Ben Affleck is trying too hard. He's faking it too hard. I guess it's a black comedy, but it doesn't have the edge to be one. If it's a farce, Affleck doesn't have the comedic chops to pull it off. If it's a sentimental Christmas movie, the setup is too awkward. It really can't be justified as anything more than a miss. Gandolfini and O'Hara actually can't find any laughs which is a tough feat for O'Hara. At least, Applegate gives the movie a small amount of heart. But I can't figure out Affleck in this.

I really enjoyed this film, and I think it is more interesting and certainly more believable than the ridiculous scenarios foisted upon us by the writers of Christmas Vacation. The performances by all the cast members ring true, again as compared to the aforementioned supposed "classic" National Lampoon production. The story makes sense, as set up in the beginning when Drew gets dumped by Misty, and Christina Applegate's performance is authentic. The chemistry between Ms. Applegate and Mr. Affleck is palpable and I was won over by their growing attraction to each other. The supporting cast, particularly James Gandolfini as Ben's "father" and Katherine O'Hara as his "mother" , create interesting, well rounded characters whose lives come together again as the result of the new family situation they find themselves in. bill Macey is very believable as Drew's grandfather , or "DooDah." I realize I am probably in the minority in terms of finding the film quite entertaining, but that is the truth.

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.