Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
When their only daughter Blair leaves the family nest, Luther and Nora Krank decide to book an island cruise to beat the yuletide blues and just skip the holidays. But their decision to boycott tradition has the whole neighborhood in an uproar, and when Blair calls on Christmas Eve to announce a surprise visit with her new fiancée, the Kranks have just twelve hours to perform a miracle and pull themselves and their neighbors together to throw the best celebration ever!
Christmas with the Kranks is a broadly formulaic holiday comedy based on John Grisham's 'Skipping Christmas.' The plot is thin and predictable, following a well-worn path of holiday rebellion and inevitable capitulation to tradition, with broad slapstick that rarely lands. Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis commit to their roles and bring some energy to the material, elevating it slightly above its script. Cinematography is standard TV-movie-adjacent work with nothing distinctive about the visual presentation. The novelty is low — while the premise has mild satirical potential (skipping Christmas entirely), the execution is entirely by-the-numbers holiday comedy. The ending leans into sentimental crowd-pleasing territory that, while predictable, delivers the warm resolution the genre promises.