You come away from this awesome pile of cheap Christmas sentiment and craven conformity thinking Scrooge may have got it right all along.

Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis are the empty-nesters who decide they're going to forego the traditional Christmas and opt instead for a Caribbean cruise.

After all, their 23-year-old daughter won't be home and they've only got themselves to think about. Think again.

News of the Kranks' unconventional seasonal plans are received in the neighbourhood in a shocked manner akin to the revelation that Snow White has herpes.

Led by local busybody Vic Frohmeyer (Aykroyd), the Kranks are challenged at every turn about their community-splitting piece of duplicity.

Standing firm, Luther (Allen) refuses to buy a Christmas tree off the local scouts, rules out erecting Frosty the Snowman on the roof of the house and cancels the traditional Christmas party the Kranks are famous for.

Then, out of the blue, their daughter rings up and announces she's will be spending Christmas at home after all. With her Peruvian fiance.

It's not so much this joke-free comedy misfires at every level, but the message sent out is that to step out of line in modern America is to invite community-fostered malice and spite.

The sentiment is as fake as the snow while the much-trumpeted American traits of tolerance and inclusiveness are warped into a strand of ultra-conservatism that's as appetising as Boxing Day left-overs.

It would be nice to think John Grisham - who, as a comedy writer, pens decent courtroom dramas - might be being ironic here. But Americans in the Chicago suburbs don't really do irony.

Any decent humour - Allen's botox treatment and Lee Curtis's trip to a tanning centre - appear to belong to another movie while a sub-plot about a neighbour getting cancer is so offensively cack-handed it beggars belief.

The only bright moment comes when it's announced Blair is joining the Peace Corps. Unfortunately, it turns out not to be Tony but the Kranks' public-spirited daughter.

Tim Evans