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Reviews
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Good idea gone bad
My parents rented this on DVD for us to watch on Christmas eve (We were gonna watch harry potter, but I was working too late that day).
Now I wasn't too sure about this movie, in fact based on the previews I wouldn't have gone near it normally. Still, the premise had promise, with the idea that after his only child is gone, the father of a family(Tim Allan, "Mr Krank") starts thinking "Why am I wasting so much money on all the Christmas stuff, when I don't especially care about it? Why not a cruise with my wife?" reasonable idea.
The first bad point is how insanely idiotic the Kranks neighbors are, especially the Dan Ankyroyd character, who at one point takes to harassing Mrs Krank about a frosty statue by screaming out (with some kids) 'We want frosty'. It seems like everyone takes the idea of skipping Christmas to be some huge scrooge type thing, when it's painfully obvious that's not the case.
Then the daughter says she's coming home, so we have the "crazy" Christmas dash, and in the end the neighbors all pitch in to help and show Tim how wrong he was, plus the wife keeps screaming on at him what a "bad idea" the cruise was, and then we get the silly "Is Santa real? YES LOOK HE IS! AND HE HAS A CAR!" at the end, to top off the stupidity.
The whole point of the movie is constantly trying to cram down your throat about what a mongrel krank is for skipping Christmas...which is not the case. What made this point more annoying for me was the complete 360 the wife does and basically stabs her husband in the back at the end.
As others have said, the botox scene is funny, but one scene doesn't make a movie, and the second half of the movie annoyed the hell out of me.
All I can say is, thank goodness they rented Bad Santa and we watched that after this pap.
Maybe good for kids who need the "magic of Christmas" but all others...steer clear of this garbage.
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie (2004)
Not great, but fun to see anime at the cinema
I went into Yu Gi Oh: The Movie, knowing what to expect. I'm not a fan of the card game(In fact, the only card I own is the freebie that came with my ticket purchase), have never played the video games and sporadically watch it on Nickelodean whenever I'm bored and there's nothing else on that I wanna watch.
As far as the movie goes, it ties (as near as I can tell) into the series (Though the start seems to imply it was gonna be a retelling of the second season). The animation is good, and apart from a few boring "we're friends we'll do it together" annoyances, was fairly action packed. Now I'll readily admit, it's nowhere near being the greatest animated movie ever... Hell, there are many story elements and characters that go unexplained, or are explained with one or two sentences, but the thing is... This is not a movie designed to be a stand alone "masterpeice" like the Walt Disney epics of old... but nor is it the rubbish they pump out today. It's merely more of what fans of the game/TV series want, as THAT is who this movie is aimed at.
Don't like animation? This is not for you.
Don't like Yu-Gi-Oh? Obviously not for you either.
But for fans or semi fans like me, it's a fun hour and a half, though only die-hard fans of the series would wanna watch it more than once. Also as my comment above said, it's nice to see anime (Espically anime that ISN'T Poke'mon!) on the big screen, which, here in Australia, is all too rare.