Welcome back to another, fresh-off-the-press Christmas movie review from the Hot Bloods Writing Club. This week, we ventured back to a time before streaming platforms – heck, you might’ve even rented this at a video store before? – and watched Deck The Halls (2006), dir. John Whitesell.
Lauren’s verdict:
For those of us going into this film with the fervent hope of a zany comedy lead by oddball powerhouse Danny DeVito, and sharp-witted Matthew Broderick – family Christmas movie Deck the Halls may just disappoint. And for the rest of us who might hold out hope for a Christmas movie so unintentionally bad that it could render you and your friends into fits of tears and laughter, it may also disappoint. Deck the Halls is a movie that found itself lightly perched and moving steadily on the line between the-good-type-of-good and the-good-type-of-bad, that it may barely make any impression on you at all.
In a small port-side town in Massachusetts Steve (Broderick) is getting ready for his favourite time of year, Christmas. The time of year he gets to lead the town in festivities and traditions. But when his new, uncouth neighbour Buddy (DeVito) blows into town with his wife and daughters Steve is less than impressed. Their relationship quickly turns sour when Buddy declares his intention of turning his house into a Christmas spectacle, outfitted with enough lights for his home to be seen from space. Steve takes it upon himself to sabotage Buddy’s goal. Their rivalry soon reaching a fever pitch, it becomes too much for their wives and kids to handle. Causing Buddy and Steve to question if Christmas is truly about the love of a devoted family, or the (arguably better) objective of sweet, sweet revenge.
Punctuated by bad green-screening, the action scenes certainly tested my patience. But maybe not as much as the distasteful framing of teenage girls as naïve, bimbo-esque, harlots, who would do better to listen to their finger wagging fathers. Broderick’s character wasn’t just stuffy, he became so wretchedly unpleasant that I began to hope his lovely wife Kelly, played by Kristin Davis, would actually leave him for good. DeVito’s character has moments of genuine sentiment though. And I feel the saving grace of this film is the unconventional yet believable relationship between Buddy and his wife Tia (Kristin Chenoweth), as well as Tia’s enduring friendship with Kelly. Which manages to showcase both women’s abilities to see each other’s differences, as strengths.
While hardly a Christmas classic, and while finding myself longing for Steve’s slow death, I feel like the overarching intention of the movie had merit. How do we cope with feeling unseen and unimportant? Steve and Buddy both struggling with being middle-aged, small town guys who feel like they haven’t much to show for their lives. Whether its strapping a bunch of lights to your house, or winning the yearly speed skating competition, we all want to feel important. But what are we willing to sacrifice to achieve it?
At the risk of attaching too much depth to a film where Matthew Broderick literally crawls through camel shit, I will just end by saying – Deck the Halls it’s not winning any awards, but it’s decidedly good for a few laughs.
2 / 5 burning Christmas trees 🎄🔥
Jeremy’s verdict:
Buddy (Danny DeVito) has just moved in across the street from Steve (Matthew Broderick) to start his new job as a car salesman in town, and all Buddy wants is to be “seen”. Both literally, when he starts to decorate his house with so many Christmas lights that satellites orbiting the Earth can see him (creating the conflict with his neighbour, Steve), and metaphorically, in his life. He wants to be seen by his friends, by his colleagues at work, by his neighbours, and by his family. He wants to be acknowledged and appreciated. This gives Deck The Halls a real and unexpected warmth.
The film’s genuinely hilarious and touching moments are all really carried by DeVito. When Steve is put in hospital, and misses his family Christmas photo, Buddy digitally edits him in using a picture of him from the hospital, complete with intubation tube. That Steve’s wife Kelly (Kristin Davis) sees the card as sweet makes it all the funnier. And when Buddy’s Christmas light efforts ramp up to the extreme, seeing DeVito’s face lit up on the roof as the bulbs change colours and animate his waving hands had me laughing.
In a sign of how much has changed since the mid-2000s though, Broderick’s Steve felt more uncomfortable than funny. When he’s not pulling up the sleeve of his daughter’s sweater, so that no one can see her shoulder, he’s freaking out at a glimpse of a male police officer who is revealed to be wearing underwear Steve clearly considers only appropriate for women – to the extent that Steve rushes out of the station in a fluster. Meanwhile, when Steve isn’t expressing control over women’s bodies, objectifying them, or judging men who express themselves in ways he reads as ‘feminine’, his young son, Carter (Dylan Blue) is getting away with gawking at paintings of women’s bodies and climbing light poles and staring through windows. It’s obvious the movie is playing the ‘conservative father’ trope for laughs, but 14 years on, we all expect a little more from our comedy now, and it’s impossible to go back to a time when we didn’t. Thankfully, DeVito’s charm shines, and when you compare Deck The Halls against other ‘family-friendly’ slapstick Christmas films of the time, it expresses enough Christmas warmth to hold its own.
3.25 / 5 burning Christmas trees 🎄🔥
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