About two months ago, my wife’s doctor recommended the book Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. When my wife was done she passed it on to me and I read it.
This is not a legal thriller, but a humorous account of what happens when Luther and Nora Krank decide to skip Christmas altogether one year. The daughter has just left to join the Peace Corps in South America, and the husband looks at last year’s Christmas outlay, and realizes he and the wife can go on a splendid Carribean cruise for half the money. With their daughter being gone what’s the point of going through all that hoopla? So they book the cruise, which starts on Christmas Day. They go to a tanning salon to darken up a bit before heading to the tropics. They refuse to put Frosty on their roof, and receive much social censure for their recalcitrance. Vic Frohmeyer, the self appointed Warden Of Making Sure Everyone On The Block Puts Frosty On Their Roofs, in particular, is incensed. But finally the day is at hand. Luther has his last day at the office and receives the envious farewells of his colleagues. It’s December 24th, the day before they’re supposed to leave, when
their daughter calls and says she will be home for Christmas after all. Moreover, she’s bringing her new fiance home to enjoy their famous holiday bash
That’s as much as I can say; I don’t want to ruin it for everyone.
Not long after I finished it, I thought what a great movie it would make. Flash forward to the other day, when I was driving down the street and just happened to fleetingly glimpse a movie ad on a bus shelter. It showed a huge Christmas package having crushed some poor guy with his feet sticking out from under it. I thought, “Could it be?” And today I looked it up at www.allmovie.com. Yes! It’s true! The movie, Christmas With The Kranks will be released in November, with Tim Allen as Luther and Jamie Lee Curtis as Nora…and Dan Aykroyd as Vic Frohmeyer! I’m loving it already.
My mom will either be so excited or so upset depending on how much they deviated from the book. The slapstick is worrying me, but I didn’t read the novel.
I know there has been a lot of negative vibes on the board of late, and I really don’t mean to pee in anybody’s Cheerios, but I read the book last year and…eh.
It was only mildly interesting and I didn’t find it particularly funny.
I only continued reading because it was a very short book, and I was waiting for some good plot twist or something amazing to happen at the end of the book; after all, it was written by John Grisham! Sadly, there was no big “aha” at the end.
No, it was not a horrible book, but I rank it up there with the humor and excitement of an old Leave It To Beaver plotline.
Oh, I haven’t seen any trailers at all. Just that one poster at a bus stop.
Well it wouldn’t surprise me if they put in more physical stuff in the movie. I know the nature of the medium requires more visual humor, but actually there’s a good deal of it in the book. They shouldn’t have to stray too far from the novel, and I’m hoping they haven’t.
I hope it’s well-received. That’s the film Mr. Rilch was working on when the other condor fell. As it is, “Mac” is going to be telling this story for the rest of his life (“So how did you get that scar?”) and I’d hate to think of it ending with, "Yeah, it was called Skipping Christmas…Yeah, I know, nobody saw it! :rolleyes: "
Then again, I don’t suppose the widow of the guy who died on Spider-Man feels any better that that film was a hit.
You must have seen a different trailer. It looks awful. Zebra thinks you saw a trailer for another movie, so in case you did you can see this one in all it’s slapstickyness.
They’re tearing down the old Rockwell aerospace plant in my town and putting up a bunch of stuff, including a large movie studio, and they filmed part of this movie there. They have your stereotypical fake neighborhood set up, and we saw a ginat snowman on one of the backless houses this spring.
I bumped this thread because now I think I’ve seen some of the trailers they were talking about.
It turns out that the poster I mentioned in the OP is for a movie called Surviving Christmas, and has no relation to the Grisham novel. I’ve seen trailers for this, and I agree it doesn’t look that good. The Grisham novel is being adapted under the title Christmas With The Kranks.