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Parents' Guide to

Surviving Christmas

By Nell Minow, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

You'll be lucky if you survive this dumb movie.

Movie PG-13 2004 90 minutes
Surviving Christmas Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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Is It Any Good?

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Kids say (3 ):

In what is intended to be one of the most revealing and touching scenes in Surviving Christmas, Drew turns a lovely gesture into a crass, garish, and cringe-inducing display. Take away the revealing and touching part, and you've pretty much got a description of the movie itself. For example, Drew gives Christine a makeover with a photo shoot and the pictures turn up on Brian's favorite porn site. And there is the painful attempt at humor in having Drew's girlfriend see him kissing Alicia and thinking it's his sister. There are also long, almost unendurable slogs through the "aw" moments when everyone starts to develop warm feelings for everyone else and the "oops" moments when the former girlfriend shows up.

James Gandolfini does his best to pretend he is not actually in this slack, dumb, boring, and charmless movie by hiding behind a beard. The rest of the cast look as though they wish they had thought of it, too. They all have that bleak, glazed, "maybe, with any luck, this will go straight to video and never be heard from again" look.

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