Holiday comedy, adapted from an anomalous novel by John Grisham (The Firm, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The this, The that), about a suburban couple who opt, after their only offspring has flown the coop into the Peace Corps, to buck the Christmas tradition and resist the social pressures of their neighbors. A promising premise, unfulfilled in the early stages and broken to bits once the offspring announces her return to the coop with a Peruvian fiancé. One tradition upheld from the start, ripe to be bucked, is that of the annual Tim Allen Christmas film. He has one scene, at least, that Chaplin could have been proud of, had Chaplin lived in the age of Botox: trying to eat fruit cocktail with immobilized mandibles. And the sight of the middle-aged Jamie Lee Curtis in an itsy-bitsy bikini arouses admiration for her courage, if it arouses nothing else. With Dan Aykroyd, M. Emmet Walsh, Julie Gonzalo; directed by Joe Roth. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd