Written by Matt Corman And Chris Ord And Don Rhymer
Directed by John Whitesell
Buddy: "I want my house to be seen from space."
In my quest to watch/rewatch Christmas movies, I rewatched something a tad more divisive. I had no idea this movie wasn't a festive favourite but here we go.
Anyways we got a small town named Cloverton where optometrist Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) fancied himself as a Christmas expert. This was at the expense of his wife, Kelly (Kristin Davis) and children, Madison (Alia Shawkat) and Carter (Dylan Blue). Unfortunately for Steve, he was about to be outdone in the Christmas stakes.
Enter the new neighbours - car salesman, Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) with trophy wife Tia (Kristin Chenowith) and their girls, Ashley and Emily (Kelly and Sabrina Aldridge). Needless to say, both wives and children get on well. It's just the husbands that don't.
In fact Buddy's overt Christmas decorations and lights were enough to have Steve resort to sabotage (and getting bested by a backup generator) before things escalated big time between the two. Eventually their growing animosity towards each other had both Steve and Buddy alienating their own families.
Then in a rather predictable fashion, it was the two of them hashing out their differences, making amends that got their families back and a rather needless subplot involving an MTV segment. I really didn't care for that last bit.
- Fans of shows such Smallville, Lost and Glee might spot certain actors and locations in this movie.
- LED lights and Google maps certainly got used a lot in this movie as well as one scene clearly ripped from Mean Girls.
- Standout music: Santa Baby, Deck The Halls and Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.
- Chronology: Christmas 2006 I presume, considering the year of it's release.
Deck The Halls isn't the best Christmas movie, but I'm not sure it's truly that awful either. Maybe mediocre at best with some very predictable character beats but I found it watchable enough.
Rating: 6 out of 10
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