Highlights
- Surviving Christmas had all the ingredients to be great - an all-star cast and a promising premise - but it ended up being one of the worst Christmas movies of all time.
- Critics on Rotten Tomatoes only gave Surviving Christmas an 8% rating, with many finding the humor lacking and criticizing Ben Affleck's performance.
- Despite its flaws, Surviving Christmas ends on a heartwarming note, with the main character finding a makeshift family and experiencing the joy of Christmas.
2004 may feel like a lifetime ago at this point, but with Surviving Christmas being released that year, the film serves as a reminder that anyone can go from a notoriously panned comedy to eventually being Batman. The bizarre thing is that Surviving Christmas had all the ingredients to be great. Chief among those ingredients was an all-star cast that included Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Christina Applegate, and Catherine O’Hara.
Despite plenty of beloved actors, Surviving Christmas has become known as one of the worst Christmas movies of all time. For some it remains in “so bad it must be watched” territory, but for others, it is stuck in the realm of “never again.” Earning just $15 million against it’s $45 million dollar budget, Surviving Christmas was a massive lump of coal for those expecting solid box office returns.
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What Is Surviving Christmas About?
Surviving Christmas | |
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Director | Mike Mitchell |
Writers |
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Starring |
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Release Date | October 22, 2004 |
Runtime | 91 minutes |
Budget | $45 million |
Box Office | $15.1 million |
Drew Latham has become a fan of the extravagant, and thanks to his success, he plans to take his girlfriend, Missy, to Fiji for Christmas. Not a fan of the surprise, Missy dumps Drew, fearing that the relationship is a waste of time. Not only has she never met his family, but Drew never even talks about them. Drew has an apology bracelet sent to Missy, but schemes for a way to avoid spending the holidays alone, starting with a visit to his therapist. Confronting the therapist in the airport, Drew decides that a way to get some closure for his holiday problems is to burn a list of complaints outside his childhood home.
When Drew does just that, Tom Valco, the man now living in that house with his family, knocks Drew out with a shovel out of understandable worry. The strange Valco family of Tom, Christine, and Brian show Drew around his old home, before Drew makes the family the offer of a lifetime: he’ll pay them a quarter of a million dollars to play a game and pretend to be his family for Christmas. After a quick contract signing, the Valcos officially become stuck with Drew.
Writing out a series of scenarios for the family, even including a line-by-line script, Drew forces the family on a variety of adventures. After going out to get a Christmas tree, Drew’s plans take a turn when Alicia, the family's eldest daughter, returns home to find the stranger Drew in control of her family. Eventually, Drew brings in a local actor to play his Doo-Dah, a grandfather figure. This change in plans results in Drew having to sweeten the original deal with the Valcos.
Drew becomes closer with the Valco’s, learning about a childhood memory from Alicia, and trying to help save the marriage of Tom and Christine. Convincing the couple to do something nice for once, Tom buys an old car and Christine gets a photo shoot done. Always extravagent, Drew accidentally turns Alicia’s cherished childhood memory into something ridiculous, making her angry and finally getting Drew to end the contract. Unfortunately, it’s at that moment that Missy calls to let Drew know she got the bracelet, and that she will be bringing her parents to meet Drew’s family.
What Is Surviving Christmas’ Rotten Tomatoes Score?
While there are bound to be some people out there who love Surviving Christmas, film critics are not among them. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics have scored Surviving Christmas at 8%, making it one of the lowest rated Christmas movies on the site. At the same time, the general audience rated the film at 30%. Most of the positive praise seems to involve headscratching at the massive hate the film gets, while only mustering up an admittance that the film was adequate. A number of negative reviews for the film report simply turning the movie off altogether before they managed to reach the credits.
As is typically the case with comedy films, many of the criticisms of the movie found the humor lacking throughout. Many others criticized the entire premise of the film, Ben Affleck’s performance, and a tone that couldn’t quite balance whether the film wanted to be a proper comedy or a romance movie, somehow missing the rom-com genre altogether. In a review from the BBC back when the film came out, Stella Papamichael shared her displeasure with her viewing experience:
Ben Affleck must have been cock-eyed drunk - and not on yuletide spirit - when he signed up for Mike Mitchell's Surviving Christmas. Sadly he doesn't emerge from this car wreck of a comedy unscathed [...] All that's vaguely funny or Christmassy about this are the sweaty beads of desperation which string together like fairy-lights across Affleck's forehead as he hammers out one lame gag after another.
How Does Surviving Christmas End?
With Missy arriving with her parents in tow, Drew has gone into a bit of a spiral. Everything may be a bit of a mess, but he offers the Valcos even more money on top of the previous deal in order to continue the charade until Missy and her family leave. Luckily, happiness might not be able to be bought, but a family sure can be. Having to up the act to a new level, the Valcos struggle to make up a childhood, complete with pictures for Drew. With a bizarre Doo-Dah visit included, things continue to get worse.
Taking Missy’s family for a tour, both families end up seeing that Christine’s earlier photo shoot was actually used for explicit content. With Missy’s family driven to the same broken state as the Valcos, they take their leave, with Drew left to break up with Missy. With two families broken and Drew once again alone, he explains to Alicia that his whole reason for renting the Valcos was because of his tragic backstory -- he never really had a family of his own for Christmas. As a kid, he had a modest upbringing with a single mother. She eventually died, leaving Drew with nothing.
Disappointed with how things turned out, Drew resigns himself to spending Christmas alone, though Tom ends up paying him a visit to collect the rest of the money he’s owed. With neither man truly wanting to be alone for Christmas, they go down to Doo-Dah’s stage production of A Christmas Carol that the entire “family” had received tickets for. Tom is able to rekindle with Christine, Drew is able to help Brian talk to a girl, and eventually, he also reunites with Alicia. With everything set right in time for Christmas, the movie ends with the whole family enjoying a meal in a diner, something Drew said he’d never been able to do since the death of his mother.
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