History YMMV / ChristmasWithTheKranks

* RootingForTheEmpire: Many, many viewers have described disgust for the neighbors shoving specific holiday traditions down the Kranks’ throats. Even with Luther firmly in the realm of JerkAss, many side with him just to spite his bossy, self-righteous, authoritarian neighbors.

* IdiotPlot: The Kranks want to go away for the holidays. But oh no, their neighbours want to win a prize for best-decorated street! ...so, why don't they just ask to decorate the Kranks' property for them in their absence? It has never occurred to the neighbours that the Kranks could ''simply celebrate Christmas on their cruise''.

** The CGI is very poor in the [[spoiler: ending shot of [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment Santa flying away in a Volkswagen bug pulled by reindeer.]]]]

* TastesLikeDiabetes: The baby-Einstein influenced score that accompanies most of the movie. Special mention goes to the scene where Luther looks at how much is spent on Christmas every year.

** The CGI face that's plastered onto Tim Allen's stunt double during his fall from the roof crosses into UncannyValley territory, not helped by the extreme close-up we get.

* UncannyValley: See SpecialEffectFailure.
* UnfortunateImplications: The very fact that not celebrating Christmas is seen as some kind of moral or even legal offense is bad enough, but then the film hammers home the idea that fighting against the status quo — no matter how much you disagree with it — will get you nowhere and you should accept it for what it is. Creator/RogerEbert [[http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/christmas-with-the-kranks-2004 noticed.]]

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: two actually.
** Nora is portrayed as an unselfish giver who goes along with Luther's plan only after everyone hounds her, and is supposed to be the voice of reason and conscience. Instead, she is an insufferable nag and a self-righteous person who thinks that her problems (and her money) entitle her to what she wants. Watch the scene where she's trying to get the so-called "honey ham" and how she expects to be able to bribe people to get her ham, and then tells people how ''her daughter'' is in the Peace Corps. She spends most of the movie berating Luther about what is a reasonable decision considering their daughter has left.

* CommonKnowledge: A lot of viewers seem to think that Blair met her fiance Enrique for the first time on the Peace Corps trip. Therefore they have a FourthDateMarriage. While this is the case in the original novel; in the film, there is a line that explains that Enrique is an old friend of Blair's from college. This means their sudden engagement isn't quite as jarring as it could have been.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: The film tries portraying Luther as a {{Jerkass}} in order to justify all the grief he suffers from, for a lot of audience goers it utterly fails to accomplish this because a lot of his grief seems understandable and it just comes across as a flimsy way to justify its problematic plot. The only reason he and Nora went to such extreme lengths to celebrate Christmas ($6000 a ''year'') is because of their daughter, and with their daughter gone they don't have it in them to continue their traditions. The cruise was just their way to get over Empty Nest Syndrome. While sending everyone at his firm letters telling them that he isn't getting them gifts seems like much, we never get any hints that he is a BadBoss otherwise and his employees act haughty for not getting fancy presents. While charity is a good thing, it isn't a crime not to donate money to a good cause, especially when you have been consistently giving to charity every year. While Luther tends to snark and dismiss his neighbors, it is only done after his so-called friends and neighbors give him and his wife a hard time, making his KickTheDog moments come across as him [[TheDogBitesBack reacting to spite from a band of entitled conformists with spite in-kind]].

* IdiotPlot: The Kranks want to go away for the holidays. But oh no, their neighbours want to win a prize for best-decorated street! ...so, why don't they just ask to decorate the Kranks' property for them in their absence?

* NightmareFuel: The Kranks' snowman that switches between a happy face and a evil PsychoticSmirk at the drop of a hat and gets a pair of GlowingEyesOfDoom in a later scene when it falls over Luther. It makes you wonder if it's possessed or something.

* WhatAnIdiot: Both the crook that the cops pick up near the end of the movie, and the cops themselves. The latter because, instead of driving him down to the station after they drop off Blair and her fiancee, decide to leave the man unattended in their car while they go to the Kranks' party. The former because, even though he manages to escape the car with the help of a gullible kid, decides that instead of just counting his blessings and making a run for it (or even going to one of the dozens of empty houses on the block), he'll just break into the house the policemen are in and steal some things.

* JerkassWoobie: As WebVideo/JonTron, [[WebVideo/BadMovieBeatdown Film Brain]], and WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic put it, Luther would be just the most irredeemable asshole who just goes out of his way to piss people off in other circumstances, but considering the situation, and said people who are ''far'' worse than he is, you're more likely to sympathize because of all the crap ''he'' goes through.

* MoodWhiplash: The news of a neighbor coming down with cancer for the ''third'' time or of Blair's marriage to a man she only just started dating are quickly glossed over as the madness on the block carries on.

** What could have been a wickedly sharp satire on the kind of people who have made Christmas the beast it is gets ruined when the movie expects us to be on their side. This film could have been an amazing dark comedy or even a straightforward ''thriller'' a la a Christmas-tinged ''Film/GetOut2017'' if it had even an ounce of irony or self-awareness about how horrifying its yuletide StepfordSuburbia really is.

** Blair is supposedly the sweet child that used to babysit all the kids, who everyone in town loves. But is she really worth that kind of admiration? From the looks of it, she is an only child, who is used to getting everything exactly as she wants (down to the "honey ham", which by the way is unopened, meaning she didn't even appreciate it) and who is superficially "[[InformedKindness good]]" because she is in the Peace Corps. She springs a surprise visit home, yet expects everything to be there including that ham. She expects them to just wait at home this year, despite the fact that there is nothing holding them there and plenty of reasons to leave (the neighbors for instance). In essence, Blair is demanding they spend that $6000 to behave as normal, and then too thoughtless or calloused to realize what a production they have to go through every year to do Christmas. It also didn't help that she was coming home with a fiancé after only being gone a few weeks (although to be fair it's mentioned he's an old friend from college), so that she had jumped into their relationship with little sense of what being engaged means. Further, her level of freak-out that police could possibly be trying to arrest a thief shows just how pampered and sheltered she really is.

* CommonKnowledge: A lot of viewers seem to think that Blair met her fiance Enrique for the first time on the Peace Corps trip. Therefore they have a FourthDateMarriage. However, there is a line that explains that Enrique is an old friend of Blair's from college. This means their sudden engagement isn't quite as jarring as it could have been.

** Blair is supposedly the sweet child that used to babysit all the kids, who everyone in town loves. But is she really worth that kind of admiration? From the looks of it, she is an only child, who is used to getting everything exactly as she wants (down to the "honey ham", which by the way is unopened, meaning she didn't even appreciate it) and who is superficially "[[InformedKindness good]]" because she is in the Peace Corps. She springs a surprise visit home, yet expects everything to be there including that ham. She expects them to just wait at home this year, despite the fact that there is nothing holding them there and plenty of reasons to leave (the neighbors for instance). In essence, Blair is demanding they spend that $6000 to behave as normal, and then too thoughtless or calloused to realize what a production they have to go through every year to do Christmas. It also didn't help that she was coming home with a fiancé after only being gone a few weeks (implying that she had only known the guy for just as long), so that she had jumped into their relationship with little sense of what being engaged means. Further, her level of freak-out that police could possibly be trying to arrest a thief shows just how pampered and sheltered she really is.

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: Luther and the neighbors are both very unsympathetic, so many viewers don't care about either of them. Luther's grievances are [[DesignatedVillain completely reasonable]], but he's such an unlikeable {{Jerkass}} that it becomes hard to root for him either.

** Blair is supposedly the sweet child that used to babysit all the kids, who everyone in town loves. But is she really worth that kind of admiration? From the looks of it, she is an only child, who is used to getting everything exactly as she wants (down to the "honey ham", which by the way is unopened, meaning she didn't even appreciate it) and who is superficially "[[InformedKindness good]]" because she is in the Peace Corps. She springs a surprise visit home, yet expects everything to be there including that ham. She expects them to just wait at home this year, despite the fact that there is nothing holding them there and plenty of reasons to leave (the neighbors for instance). In essence, Blair is demanding they spend that $6000 to behave as normal, and then too thoughtless or calloused to realize what a production they have to go through every year to do Christmas. It also didn't help that she was coming home with a fiancé after only being gone a few weeks (implying that he had only known the guy for just as long), so that she had jumped into their relationship with little sense of what being engaged means. Further, her level of freak-out that police could possibly be trying to arrest a thief shows just how pampered and sheltered she really is.

* TheScrappy: Odds are you will ''not'' be taking the sides of the neighbors for their obsessive effort to force the Kranks to celebrate the holidays in the way that only they see fit. Also doubles as a massive case of UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.

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* ActuallyPrettyFunny: The movie had an actually pretty funny gag going involving an incident with a robber scaring the crap out of Enrique and Blair. Too bad [[DontExplainTheJoke they explained it seconds later by stating that this was Enrique's first Christmas in the USA and thus, wanted to make a good impression on him when it was too late]].

%% * SoBadItsGood: For some viewers.
* SpaceWhaleAesop: If you overcome your hatred of the holidays and join in with the Christmas celebrations [[TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong like everyone else on your block]], [[spoiler: the real genuine Santa Claus will save you from being killed by a burglar.]]
** Also, it is so wrong to go on a cruise for Christmas... Unless you're dying of cancer.
* SpecialEffectFailure: The CGI face that's plastered onto Tim Allen's stunt double during his fall from the roof crosses into UncannyValley territory, not helped by the extreme close-up we get.

* DontExplainTheJoke: The movie had an actually pretty funny gag going involving an incident with a robber scaring the crap out of Enrique and Blair. Too bad they explained it seconds later by stating that this was Enrique's first Christmas in the USA and thus, wanted to make a good impression on him when it was too late.

** Blair is supposedly the sweet child that used to babysit all the kids, who everyone in town loves. But is she really worth that kind of admiration? From the looks of it, she is an only child, who is used to getting everything exactly as she wants (down to the "honey ham", which by the way is unopened, meaning she didn't even appreciate it) and who is superficially "[[InformedKindness good]]" because she is in the Peace Corps. She springs a surprise visit home, yet expects everything to be there including that ham. She expects them to just wait at home this year, despite the fact that there is nothing holding them there and plenty of reasons to leave (the neighbors for instance). In essence, Blair is demanding they spend that $6000 to behave as normal, and then too thoughtless or calloused to realize what a production they have to go through every year to do Christmas. Further, her level of freak-out that police could possibly be trying to arrest a thief shows just how pampered and sheltered she really is.

* AccidentalAesop: Whatever your motivation, acting outside of the established norm and rejecting conformity is a fast way to make enemies of those who like the status quo (which is usually the majority of people around you).