Movie Review: "Deck the Halls" (2006)

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Movie: "Deck the Halls"
Director: John Whitesell
Year: 2006
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) loves Christmas family traditions. Unfortunately, Steve's boisterous new neighbor Buddy Hall's (Danny DeVito) over-the-top style of decorating puts a damper on Steve's Christmas spirit. 

Deck the halls of big ol' NOPE-ys. Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, ughhhhh, ugh, UGH, UGH, UGH.

Sometimes we wonder to ourselves while we're watching movies like "Deck the Halls," do the actors know the movie they are making is complete and utter shit? Did anyone involved in this movie, the writers, the director, the producers, did anyone pay attention and realize it was not only shit, but shit that shouldn't have been made in the first place? This is supposedly a Christmas movie where the two main characters are wholly unlikable people right off the bat. Steve Finch, played by Matthew Broderick, is an optometrist and is known as Mr. Christmas around his small town. When the house across the street from his is leased to a man named Buddy Hall, played by Danny DeVito, he immediately rubs Steve the wrong way, mainly because Steve seems to have a perpetual stick up his ass, but then again, when does Matthew Broderick play a normal, centered character who wants to have fun (apart from Ferris Bueller a hundred years ago)? Steve loves sticking to his regular yearly traditions, and even the slightest deviation from these traditions and plans seems to throw his entire life into chaotic and irreversible turmoil. When Buddy finds out that his house doesn't show up on the website called MyEarth, this movie's knockoff Google Earth because not even Google wanted to be associated with this piece of garbage, Buddy's massive inferiority complex kicks in and he decides to create a light display that is so bright, so grandiose, so unbelievably largess that it's visible from space. This upsets Steve to no end because to him Buddy's light display is an eyesore and a blight on his perfect little town, even though everyone else except for Steve seems to love the lights and festive decor. In turn, Steve starts a ridiculous feud with Buddy that leads to all sorts of stupid shenanigans and felonies, but seem to get ignored in the end.

Let us start by saying, since this is a comedy, we expected to laugh at least a little. The jokes in this movie are eye-rollingly bad. We never thought it was possible to physically hurt from rolling our eyes so much, and maybe we were just tired on top of it, but good lord, our eye sockets felt sore after watching "Deck the Halls." Not only are the jokes unfunny, but they can often be divisive and revolting, too. Included in this film is a scene where Steve is so disgusted by the fact the police chief might be wearing woman's undergarments, he refuses to fill out a police report. What? This is bizarre at best, but it only gets worse from here. There is another scene where Steve and Buddy stumble upon a performance where three female dancers, backs turned to the audience, are shaking around in sexy Santa outfits on stage. These two old men proceed to cat call the girls from the audience, which is already a crappy thing to do in any situation, but then they proceeded to shout, "Who's your daddy!?!" only for the girls to turn around and actually be Steve and Buddy's 15 year old daughters. Then, and we shit you not, upon realizing he is a disgusting pervert, Steve exclaims, "Oh, I'm your daddy!" Holy shit! Who the fuck thought that was a good joke!? Right there, we wanted to turn this movie off. We can (and do) watch a lot of stuff in movies that can be uncomfortable. This is one of the worst things we have ever seen. This is a FAMILY COMEDY. No part of this scene is family friendly, and it's especially not funny. It is disgusting and wrong, even for a joke. The movie tries to redeem itself in the end by tacking on a spirit of Christmas "love thy neighbor" type of message, but by then, it's too late. This crammed in sentiment is not enough to make it be any good, and it's so contrived anyway, all we can do is shake our heads at how bad the whole experience watching this movie was. From the piss poor acting to the terribly written script, avoid "Deck the Halls" like 10,000 plagues infested with chlamydia.

My Rating: 1/10
BigJ's Rating: 1/10
IMDB's Rating: 4.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 6%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
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One year ago, we were watching: "Bad Santa"

Two years ago, we were watching: "Love Actually"