So here we are, we have reached another festive film finale here at TNiFN Towers. We have already been to the cinema to see Nativity 3, but we round off our Christmas movies with;
Surviving Christmas
Well Nativity 3 was a little disappointing to be honest, so we were hoping that Surviving Christmas would make up for the earlier mediocre offering. It certainly looked like it would be good judging by the trailer and starring Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini what could go wrong?
Affleck plays the millionaire advertising executive Drew Latham. Latham is at odds with his fiance as she has never met his family and cites this as a lack of commitment. Drew never talks of his family and says he certainly does not want to spend Christmas with them, this causes a split in the relationship, so Drew goes off to fight his Christmas demons and ends up back at his childhood home, to try to recapture the memories of Christmases past.
This is when the trouble starts.
James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara play Tom and Christine Valco who now live in Drew's childhood home with their family and they discover the somewhat bemused Drew on their drive, a big clout with a snow shovel later and Drew is recovering in the house. (You'll have to watch it to fill in the gaps in this synopsis!)
This is when Drew dreams up this farcical notion that he can 'adopt' the Valco family for Christmas, to relive and revive his thoughts of Christmas. And so we are then taken upon a journey with a reluctant family lured in by financial reward from Drew and a rather eager eccentric intent on going back to when Christmas was fun.
As a story it had all the promises of something worthy of a film, but even though we had the delights of Affleck and Gandolfini as the lead characters, it was somewhat lacking in substance. The comedy was fine, but not sufficient. The absurdity of the situation, somewhat overshadowed the story and not sufficient effort was put in to make this a great film, it only just scrapes in as a good one. Don't get us wrong, it was entertaining, it was funny, at times it was romantic, at times it was heart warming, but at Christmas you need to turn these up to the maximum, Surviving Christmas didn't quite get the temperature right.
TNiFN Rating 53%
And there we have it, another festive film rundown complete and it only remains for us to say; thank you so much for stopping by and reading the blogs and supporting our little film night. It is just our attempt to spend some time together and be entertained and then pass that onto you via the blogs.
So Merry Christmas and here's to a happy 2015 and more films!
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