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1. Deck The Halls Preview
2. Deck The Halls 2011 Movie
3. The Movie Deck The Halls
4. Deck The Halls Review Consumer Reports

Parent Movie Review

Christmas traditions are important to many people, but to Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) they are the holiday season. The optometrist blames his obsession on his childhood full of frequent relocations as the family followed his military father. Now, as a grown man, he wants nothing short of a “Courier and Ives” experience each December to share with his wife Kelly (Kristin Davis), teen daughter Madison (Alia Shawkat) and son Carter (Dylan Blue).

Deck the Halls Critics Consensus. Relying on flat humor and a preposterous plot, Deck the Halls is an unnecessarily mean-spirited holiday movie that does little to put viewers in a holiday mood.

Unfortunately, his perfect, snow-dusted, white picket fence neighborhood is about to change. Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) and his family are moving in across the street, and the biggest item they are bringing with them is Buddy’s over-the-top personality.

A salesman extraordinaire, Buddy can convince anyone to buy anything—however he is easily pulled off track and has a hard time sticking with a job. The Halls have barely settled in when the latest distraction comes along in the form of an Internet website called My Earth (think Google Earth) that shows pictures of the planet from space. When Buddy’s twin teen daughters Ashley and Emily (Kelly and Sabrina Aldridge) point out the neighbor’s house and explain they can’t see their own, the determined Dad decides to upgrade his image… with as many Christmas lights as it will take to do the job.

1. Nov 22, 2006 “Deck the Halls,” it must be said, has none whatsoever. Broderick and Mr. DeVito look tired and out of sorts, and you can hardly blame them, given the picture’s inept, curdled mixture of.
2. David Nusair Reel Film Reviews December 18, 2020 There's ultimately not a whole lot contained within Deck the Halls worth getting interest in or excited about.
3. Makes us miss those Home Alone days. Read Common Sense Media's Deck the Halls review, age rating, and parents guide.

And so the conflict begins, with one neighbor wanting to turn the street into a veritable Christmas carnival, while the other only wants some peace while quietly sipping hot cocoa and watching snowflakes drift to the ground. As the lights get brighter and the noise becomes louder, the capacity of both men to remain polite becomes stretched, and the spirit of the season soon vanishes.

Written at the maturity level of a ten-year-old, Deck the Halls walks the well-worn path of adults acting like children and children acting like, well… hookers. The Hall twins dress as if they are headed to a seedy street corner, while the Finch’s son, who appears to be about 12, takes the opportunity to ogle the new scenery. The girls quickly convert conservative Madison to their clothing choices—although a little of the bookish brunette does rubs off on the stereotyped bimbo blondes when she convinces them to try reading a book.

Other disappointments are a number of somewhat veiled sexual innuendos, the portrayal of a cross-dressing sheriff who wears pink thong panties and a scene in which the two fathers lust over three female dancing Santas—only to discover they have been drooling over their daughters. Nor does the irreverent act of dousing their eyeballs with baptismal water at the local church help to washthese script sins away.

Sadly, this film is just one more in a growing trend of Christmas movies depicting dysfunctional families and circus like antics. While many of these recent titles (including this one) try to wrap things up with a “warm fuzzy” moment at the end, it is small reward for having had to sift through 90 minutes of the proceeding packaging. Considering the classic cinematic offerings of yesteryear, parents may want to check twice before adding this holiday turkey to their list of celebration ideas.

Deck the Halls
Rating & Content Info

Why is Deck the Halls rated PG?Deck the Halls is rated PG by the MPAA for some crude and suggestive humor, and for language.

Although it’s rated for family audiences, parents may be surprised by the sexual humor and innuendo in this film. A cross-dressing sheriff (who wears women’s underwear under his uniform), scantily dressed teen girls, and remarks about male anatomy may seem out of place in a Christmas movie. The plotline is bedecked with slapstick violence such as falls, snowballs (an elderly lady is accidentally hit in the head) and other mishaps. An inebriated man, who is a secondary character, drinks from a bottle of beer on a residential street. Some mild profanity is included, and a man shouts a term of Christian deity, but then pretends he was about to sing a Christmas carol.

Page last updated November 28, 2020

Deck the Halls Parents' Guide

Can Christmas traditions sometimes become too demanding? Do you think people are expecting more or less from the holiday season? Why might we be disappointed with the outcome?

Home Video

The most recent home video release of Deck the Halls movie is November 6, 2007. Here are some details…

The DVD release of Deck the Halls is trimmed with audio commentaries by director John Whitesell and actor Danny DeVito, an interview with Dylan Blue (who plays Carter Finch in the movie), alternate and deleted scenes, outtakes and bloopers, as well as a peek behind the scenes (including set and lighting design plus the intricacies of shooting Christmas in July). The dual-sided disc offers both full frame and wide screen presentations, with audio tracks in Dolby Digital 5.1 (English, French and Spanish). Subtitles are available in English and Spanish.

Related home video titles:

Tried and true classic Christmas movies you may want to share with your family include: It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34^th Street (1947) or the 1994 remake, and A Christmas Carol.

Reviewed by: Lori Souder
CONTRIBUTOR

Deck The Halls Preview

REVIEWS of other Christmas movies

“There glows the neighborhood”

At the opening of the movie we are introduced to an eye doctor (Matthew Broderick) who is happy with his place in his quaint little Massachusetts town. Steve Finch has a nice home in a attractive neighborhood, a pretty wife (Kristin Davis), and two older children. He is “Mr. Christmas” in his town, and he has a calendar made of wood that is followed religiously every year starting on the first day of December. Each calendar day has a painted symbol on each side of the inset block that is turned over when the day arrives. The Finch family is reluctant to begin the Christmas treadmill, but it means so much to Steve that they try to put up with it.

Meanwhile, their next door neighbor’s house finally finds a buyer. Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) moves in noisily in the middle of the night. It is just the beginning of many sleepless nights for the Finch family. The Halls try to be friendly, but end up making a bad first impression on their neighbors. Things go downhill quickly between Steve Finch and Buddy Hall, but their wives and children bond.

Soon the real trouble starts. Buddy Hall becomes obsessed with having his light-covered house seen from satellites in space, and Steve Finch wants to remain the local authority on Christmas, and also wants to get a night’s sleep without beacons beaming into his bedroom. Dirty tricks between the two men escalate to become a blood feud.

Deck The Halls 2011 Movie

This movie lacks some of the things that make a comedy work. There were no subplots or goofy side-characters. No running jokes. No development of the children’s personalities or Danny DeVito’s character. I don’t know what would be of interest to children in this movie, other than the bright lights on the over-decorated house and the animals in the living nativity scene.

In the first few minutes of the film, there were references to a Meth lab, cross dressing, a peeping tom, and there is some major cleavage spillage (no nudity). There are also a couple of other references/innuendos to sex and sexual organs that I would rather not mention. The Lord’s name is taken in vain throughout the movie. The name of Jesus only comes up once in the movie before the finale, and it is taken in vain as well. There is one short scene in a church, where Holy Water was used to try to cancel out some sins of lust.

The Movie Deck The Halls

I kept waiting for the movie to feel fun or for the comedy to “kick in,” but it never happened for me. There are some really funny moments, but the vast majority had already been revealed in the movie trailers. The movie plods on and on, seemingly going nowhere, and it just felt to me like a series of train wrecks. I think the movie had a lot of potential to be cute and hilarious, but it missed the mark.

The movie kept repeating over and over, near the end, that the true meaning of Christmas is about being with your family. But that is not the true meaning of Christmas, at all. It is that God lovingly sacrificed his only begotten son for us, his undeserving but beloved human creations.

I really wanted to like this movie, the trailers were very wild and comical, and the movie seemed full of possibilities. But the script just was not up to the quality of the fine actors. Danny DeVito adds his usual charisma, and Broderick his believable “everyman” quality, but even they could not pull much meaning out of a Christmas story with no heart. Kristin Chenoweth who plays Tia Hall is charming and funny, but her over-ample cleavage was really the only thing that the director (John Whitesell) wants us to notice about her.

The editing is choppy; sometimes the pace is hectic, and other times slow and boring. Some of the jokes seem to have the punchlines taken out, one included skittish mystery horses, and another one about sailors going off to war. I suspect that the movie was re-cut and the worst jokes left out to make it seem more family-friendly. Also, part of the ending seemed totally out of place. The ending was all holiday lights, noise, holiday lights, noise, a quiet and a deeply meaningful Christian Christmas Hymn, and then more holiday lights and noise, and Ta Da… the end.

Those quiet reverent moments seemed totally out of context with the entire movie. They seem added in after the fact, just to justify that the movie has anything meaningful to say about Christmas at all.

Deck The Halls Review Consumer Reports

The main theme of the movie is about getting what you want. Even at the part, when the two warring men, Hall and Finch, are down for the count, they just figured out how to get back what they want, not regretting who they have hurt or what they had done to each other and their Christmas memories. So they conspire to attain their goals together, but not because of any genuine remorse or humbleness. It was sad to see.

The movie should have been rated PG-13 for the references to adult issues, drugs, etc. I just don’t think many children would enjoy it, as the young people really had little to do with the plot. They were just props for some sexual humor and acted mostly as place-fillers. Finch’s teenage girl was, in one scene, an object of lust for the two adult men, one her father, and in another short scene seemed to be dating a group of men going off to war …it was not fully explained, and her parents had previously said that she was too young to date! I was very confused by this, and I don’t think the messages are good ones. In fact, there are not any good messages in the movie.

The movie was very disappointing, but if you have not seen the trailers over and over again, you probably would enjoy it after some offensive references are cut for television broadcast. But don’t expect a “feel good” Christmas movie. It just is not that kind of film.

I cannot recommend “Deck the Halls.” It may be a Christmas movie, but it is not about Christmas. I think it is mostly about making money at Christmas time.

Violence: Mild / Profanity: Mild / Sex/Nudity: Minor

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