Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls (Danny DeVito, Matthew Broderick, Kristin Davis, Kristin Chenoweth) – There’s a reason I don’t usually see Christmas movies. They’re all the same.  They’re cheesy, predictable, and easy money for the studios since people need a place to drop off the kids while they shop.  That defines this movie perfectly, only the box office has been very light.  Matthew Broderick has always had that winning personality that makes him popular as an actor, but his movies as an adult have almost all done surprisingly poorly.  And when he gets serious, as he did in Election and You Can Count on Me, people just don’t go to see him.  When he plays in kids’ movies, like Inspector Gadget, he is playing beneath his talent, but people show up.  His is a career in terrible flux.  He has starred with some of Hollywood’s most bankable stars (Jim Carrey, Meg Ryan, Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, Marlon Brando), and not one of those movies was considered a box-office success.  Go figure.  His star has shown brightest on Broadway in plays like How to Succeed in Business Without Really trying and  The Producers, but the latter’s movie version tanked.  Now he’s teamed with Danny DeVito, who plays his part exactly right and very much like every other DeVito role of late.  And add in two veterans, Kristin Davis (Sex and the City) and Kristin Chenoweth (West Wing), and you get an enjoyable and improbable family film about two neighboring families. Yes, you’ve seen it before – the entrenched family, led by the town optometrist and resident “Christmas guy,” finds themselves with crude new neighbors (DeVito, Chenoweth and two sex bombs/twin daughters). Motivated by wanting his house and, thus, himself to be seen from space, the insecure DeVito decides to make his house a Christmas extravaganza of lights and sounds, all to the distress of Broderick.  The two feud, fight, and ultimately befriend because they realize they’ve left their families in the wake.  All of this is very fun, but then they add a few bad words and a little sexual innuendo to get a PG rating, and you wonder what the writers and producers were thinking.  I’ve already given this too much space since it’s not worth seeing unless, like us, you’re already seen everything worth seeing in the holiday season.