Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4255 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-11-26
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 89 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Good neighbours can be hard to come by and when the flighty Buddy Hall (Danny Devito) moves in across the street from the conservative Dr. Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick), it quickly becomes apparent that the two men are complete opposites. While Finch methodically plans out every minute of the coming Christmas season for his family, Buddy craves freshness and excitement and is seized by an impulsive desire to decorate his house so brightly that it can be seen from space. While the men's wives Kelly (Kristin Davis) and Tia (Kristin Chenoweth) and their children revel in one another's differences and form solid friendships, a rivalry of personalities and Christmas spirit ensues between the two men that will wind up testing the patience and love of every member of both families. This is fun, comical holiday entertainment for the entire family ages 9 and older. --Tami Horiuchi

Synopsis
A slapstick holiday heart-warmer in the tradition of HOME ALONE, DECK THE HALLS boasts an excellent cast that includes both seasoned actors and promising stars. Matthew Broderick (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF) stars as Steve Finch, an optometrist in the postcard town of Cloverdale, Massachusetts, who does double duty as the town's 'Christmas Guy.' Steve was raised as an army brat, and as an adult looks to make up for his childhood's lack of Yuletide cheer, organising Christmas around a strict regimen of maximum celebration efficiency. Because Steve finds his kids turning out a little weirder than he would like--10-year-old Carter (Dylan Blue) is suffering a midlife crisis and teenage Madison (Alia Shawkat, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT) is a loner with a bad attitude--he deems them in need of heightened holiday cheer. Steve's hopes for the perfect Christmas are disturbed, however, when new neighbours move in across the street. Car salesman Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito, BE COOL), his wife Tia (Kristen Chenoweth, RUNNING WITH SCISSORS), and their blonde-bombshell twin daughters (Sabrina and Kelly Aldridge) are a bit rowdier than most of the folks in the Finches' quiet neighbourhood, to say the least. When Buddy takes it upon himself to create an extravagant Christmas spectacle so that his house can be seen from space, the rivalry between Steve and Buddy reaches drastic heights of ridiculousness, until both men learn a little something about the meaning of Christmas. DECK THE HALLS offers much for families to enjoy, with a warm message about the importance of family and the value of spontaneity in a culture of efficiency. Kristen Davis of SEX AND THE CITY charms as Steve’s wife Kelly, while Broderick and DeVito are always fun to watch.

Customer Reviews

Good old christmas fun
I really enjoyed this film! Its a fun family christmas movie..My only problem is, is that i watched it in september.....and its got me eager for christmas!! so once the film ended i was quite disapointed as christmas is so far away! Lol..great film, very funny and silly and everything festive film should be :)

load of tripe
i bought quite a few christmas dvds recently and had been looking forward to this one... i was very disappointed. i watch christmas films to get more into the spirit of the season, this film did nothing to help! danny devitos daughters looked like low class strippers and mathew brodericks acting was particularly wooden (more so than usual!)
If you want to watch a nice christmassy film i would recommend christmas with the kranks or national lampoons christmas vacation instead of this waste of time!

A Terrible Christmas Time
First of all, I buy a lot of Christmas movies. I don't have much in the way of familly, but I do know how to make a traditional Christmas for myself. Being Norwegian, there's not a whole lot of Christmas, or Jule, movies to chose from. So every Christmas I'll watch It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas and of course, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation!

But, nearly every year I try to add to the collection of movies I watch around the jule time. Lately, this hasn't gone all that well.

Couple of years ago we had the terrible disaster that was The Kranks movie, and now there's this stinker.

The looks of the move, and the main actors bode well, but it turns into a ransid corpse really fast. The premise, two self sentered men, oblivious of each others feelings, their families and the people around them, are loud, destructive and low brow. The wives are of course more intelligent than the men (anyone getting a bit tired of this being the case in more or less everything being made these days?), one wife is at the other end of being a brain surgeon while the other isn't living up to her potential, but she's a housewife and that'll do, until suddenly it doesn't, or something to that effect.

The kids might as well have been cardboard cut-outs. As for De-Vito's daughters, I'm not a prude, but Playboy wannabees don't cut it for me when I'm trying to get into a Christmas spirit.

And that's what I want these movies to do, get me in a Christmas Spirit. But here's the thing, when you make a movie by the same commitee of people who deside that it's wrong to use the word Christmas and replace it with the word Holiday, you get a movie that fails to bring people together and only works as a parade of bad taste.

The bickering and backstabbing by the main characters in this movie just sucked the joy of the season right out of me, and, as hard as I tried, I just can't find anything about this movie I liked, beyond the fact that it was nice seeing Danny DeVito again. Kind of.

So, that's that... Please don't think of me as a Norwegian Grinch for it.