Deck the Halls 2006

Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune: ... Deck the Halls has little to recommend it. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: It's disappointing to see Broderick and DeVito try to make mediocre material work. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: This one follows the depressing pattern of Surviving Christmas and Christmas With the Kranks: enforced holiday cheer gives way to bilious hatred, then hollow forgiveness. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: Looking for some early holiday cheer? Look at anything but Deck the Halls. Read more

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle: The raw ingredients of this crass holiday comedy include an inept stab at Home Alone-style slapstick, sitcom-thin characters, a snickering attitude about tacky yuletide decorations and a good helping of smarmy sentimentality. Merry Christmas! Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: [Deck the Halls] wants to be both naughty and nice, but just ends up feeling deeply confused. Read more

Annemarie Moody, Arizona Republic: It's not horrible, but every sight gag and 'real meaning of Christmas' speech has been seen and heard before, and it steals gratuitously from Chevy Chase's masterpiece National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: How come the talk-radio blowhards never bring movies like this up when they're inveighing against the War on Christmas? Read more

Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times: Like a fatally snarled string of Christmas lights, Deck the Halls promises holiday cheer but delivers only frustration. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: It's a holiday ritual: Each year, American moviegoers get the misanthropically stupid, plastic-satire-of- a-plastic-society Christmas comedy they deserve. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Since this is ostensibly a holiday family picture, things never get so nasty as to be Bad Santa-style outrageous, unless you think a rigged speed-skating competition or a cross-dressing local sheriff is the height of hilarity. Read more

Jennie Punter, Globe and Mail: Although it borrows ingredients from many familiar Christmas flicks, it's got a sly twinkle of its own. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: There is something about the holiday season that brings lazy filmmakers to pitch meetings with Frank Capra knockoffs clutched in their sweaty paws. Read more

Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: Movies like Deck the Halls should make us all thankful that Christmas only comes once a year. What other season could possibly inspire a story as insipid as this? Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Deck the Halls strains to be both naughty and nice with much clamor and not much conviction. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: A holiday farce that pairs a colorful cast with a generic filmmaker. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: As reliable as your Aunt Harriet's sweet potato casserole, every holiday season brings a movie just like John Whitesell's Deck the Halls, in which otherwise sensible actors commit themselves to a cheerless exercise in jingle bell hell. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Does anybody in Hollywood celebrate Christmas anymore? You have to wonder, with the woeful Christmas fare that has been hurled at us the past few years. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: I love the Christmas season, but there are times when I wish it would go away if only to save audiences from horrific experiences like this. Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: You cannot believe how excruciatingly awful this movie is. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: As long as atrocious, fake-pine duds like this keep making their money back, there's no such thing as a Christmas that's too commercial. Read more

Joshua Land, Time Out: Laden with false climaxes, the overstuffed plot leaves you exhausted well before the movie ends, and the amiable actors sleepwalk through their uninspired roles. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: In essence a title and release date in search of a movie, Deck the Halls is a lifeless, workmanlike comedy conceived to provide holiday shoppers an inoffensive respite from the mall. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: I literally did not count a single laugh in the whole aimless schlep, except for the hucksters who made it, on their way to the bank. Read more