In Deck the Halls stuffy optician Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) always plans a traditional Christmas for the family and organizes the town's Christmas display.
His brash new neighbour Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) a car salesman moves in and plans to have the brightest display in town and wants his lights to be seen from space much to the Finch's chagrin.
This is a film with a Christmas themed 'neighbours at war' idea and as its a comedy it means you have to have mishaps leading to hilarious consequences such as a can of gasoline inexplicably outside a Pine tree display in the woods despite falling on snow somehow ignites when a tree is chopped by an axe. When your young children exclaim how could this happen you kind of guess this is all nonsense.
However the film is full of this type of unfunny scrapes, there are no nice characters in this film. Broderick is a stuffy bore, DeVito is annoying as hell. I could never understand how others in the town liked DeVito so much and its never explained in an early scene in the car showroom how he managed to sell the car so fast to the owner of the car lot. You just have to take it as read he is an ace salesman because of his boorish charm.
The film is lazily written, its not funny, even when the duo make up at the end you do not feel much as you knew it was going to happen and you never liked them in the first place. There is little chemistry between the characters because it is so badly written and directed with the actors making the best of a bad job. The film was rightly nominated for the Raspberry Awards.
His brash new neighbour Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) a car salesman moves in and plans to have the brightest display in town and wants his lights to be seen from space much to the Finch's chagrin.
This is a film with a Christmas themed 'neighbours at war' idea and as its a comedy it means you have to have mishaps leading to hilarious consequences such as a can of gasoline inexplicably outside a Pine tree display in the woods despite falling on snow somehow ignites when a tree is chopped by an axe. When your young children exclaim how could this happen you kind of guess this is all nonsense.
However the film is full of this type of unfunny scrapes, there are no nice characters in this film. Broderick is a stuffy bore, DeVito is annoying as hell. I could never understand how others in the town liked DeVito so much and its never explained in an early scene in the car showroom how he managed to sell the car so fast to the owner of the car lot. You just have to take it as read he is an ace salesman because of his boorish charm.
The film is lazily written, its not funny, even when the duo make up at the end you do not feel much as you knew it was going to happen and you never liked them in the first place. There is little chemistry between the characters because it is so badly written and directed with the actors making the best of a bad job. The film was rightly nominated for the Raspberry Awards.