(October 29, 2004) — The perfect Christmas with rosy cheeks and noses, hot mugs of cocoa with marshmallows, cheesy knitted sweaters with depictions of 2-bit reindeer and the warm cooing of the stereo as it plays “Silent Night.” Nothing can desecrate this ideal evening. Until, out from the music box comes Milli Vanilli screeching out random Christmas melodies and your “silent night” becomes a “raging nightmare” and your Christmas spirit and cheer is shattered. Horrid Christmas entertainment strikes again! With the emphasis of red and green, conspicuous consumption, overly zealous Christmas chi, Big Lots’ decorations and toilet humor that was flushed ages ago, DreamWorks Pictures’ Surviving Christmas plops out like the leftovers of Rudolph’s yesterday meal. Academy Award winner Ben Affleck stars in Surviving Christmas as Drew Latham, a millionaire devoid of the feeling of the familial Christmas that supposedly all children sport in their fond childhood memories. With the plan to journey to the distant paradise of Fiji with his materialistic and prissy typical valley girl girlfriend Missy, he gets ready to not spend another Christmas alone. But unable to cope with his continuous delay in proposing to her, Missy waves the offer away and instead plans to spend Christmas with her family and wonders at when Drew shall be spending time with his unknown and mysteriously “not-there” family. Nostalgic and wanting the merry little Christmas, Drew heads down to the house where he spent his innocent childhood years and begins to idiotically hug the trees and show much affection to the house’s front yard. But unfortunately, his family no longer resides there and then from the door and into the movie emerges Tom Valco (James Gandolfini a.k.a. mafioso Tony Soprano) who then knocks Ben Affleck out for the count with a snow shovel. This made me laugh, I must admit, because it caused me so much joy to hope that possibly, just possibly, this sudden concussion could turn the movie’s dreadful and not humorous plot to something more enjoyable when Affleck woke up. But I spoke too soon. Instead, Affleck wakes up and bribes the Valco family, which consists of Alicia (Christina Applegate), Christine (Catherine O’Hara) and Brian (Josh Zuckerman) with much money into putting up with his stupidity until the end of the holidays. And so the movie lives on with typical holiday field trips, an unnecessary climax at which Missy pays Latham and the Valcos visit with her stuck-up family and, of course, the moral! That teaches us what? That presents, bills and debts, dead trees and hot turkey can make quite a difference in your character in just one special holiday? The substance and material used in the script and emotional output of the characters and their roles must have been written by someone flying high in the sky on the account of ingesting some “special” eggnog. As stale as last year’s Christmas pudding, the actors’ humor becomes nothing but acts of desperation in order to get one “ha” from the audience. The tears in my eyes were out of pity and not of exuberant elation due to the hilarity of the situations. Who puts an ex-mafioso as a fatherly figure in a Christmas story? It’s like giving Al Pacino from Scarface the role of being Father Christmas. Wow, the contrast might seem humorous, but really it isn’t. Tom Valco spits out jokes while gritting his teeth and adds nothing to attain the overall effect that was desired. I’ll give them credit on releasing this movie two months prior to Christmas. It saves another spot on cinema’s movie play lists for possibly a better movie. But who knows with the American movie industry, it’s all the same one way or another. Like chestnuts roasting atop an open fire, Surviving Christmas should burn with humiliation and shame at its absolute failure.