We all probably have at least one neighbour like Danny DeVito's Buddy Hall, the chief antagonist of 2006's yuletide misfire Deck the Halls. You know the type - they go crazy with the Christmas decorations and lights on their house as some sort of strange attention-seeking personality crisis. It's never clear why the house needs to be so retina-scorching but what is evident is that this will inspire other neighbours to either follow suit or harbour inexplicable grudges. I know, because I've been there. We have some 'zany' neighbours who go bonkers with the lights each year and it kind of makes me hate them, perhaps because my upbringing had caused me to treat attention-seekers as the enemy.
I guess I'd be the Matthew Broderick character here, Steve Finch. He loves the holidays too, maybe a bit too much, so when the Hall family move in across the street and Buddy decides to cover his house in so many lights that it can be seen from space, Finch feels threatened. It's an interesting phenomenon, that pressure we can feel to 'keep up with the Joneses' and it's quite rare for a film to tackle it. What a shame, then, that this one is crap.
Buddy is suffering a midlife crisis and feeling insignificant, despite having a well-paying job, gorgeous family and one of those massive houses people tend to have in Christmas movies. To conquer his existential funk, he splashes all his money buying shedloads of decorative tat. For this, he is celebrated as a total badass champion of Christmasness, even though he loses his job in the process and behaves like a complete monster towards his neighbours.
Of course, nothing brings redemption quite like a little festive cheer. As long as your house is so merry it can be seen from space, everything can be forgiven, apparently.
Finch too becomes so hellbent on sabotaging his rival that he alienates his own loving family, yet somehow ends up becoming Buddy's best pal. How does Steve win his brood back? By spoiling them with a lavish feast and joining forces with his former foe to light up the sky, of course. You see? All your problems can be solved by just chucking more and more money at Christmas.
Like many a festive dud before it, this one lures audiences in with a capable, loveable cast but then saddles said cast with a lacklustre script, laden with questionable morals and character motivation. It's filled with crass humour that might be acceptable if only the punchlines were good. So, we get gags about camels spitting in faces, the horror of being hugged by a nude Danny DeVito (shudder...) and, most unforgivably, Finch mistakenly lusting after his own teenage daughter. Ho ho ho!
It's never remotely believable that any of these things would happen but the film constantly layers everything in a cozy, glittering layer of festive schmaltz in the hopes that we won't notice or just not care. Salvation is never far away when there's lots of cards, candles and camel puke.
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