If you want to see a film where Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito act like juveniles than Deck The Halls is for you. Of course some juveniles might get offended.Broderick plays the unofficial Cloverdale, Massachusetts consultant on Christmas decoration and decor. That is until DeVito comes to town and moves across the street. DeVito is gauche and city born and bred and in Kristin Chenoweth has this Playboy Centerfold wife with a pair of twin daughters who take after mom. They arouse jealousy in Broderick's daughter Alia Shawkat, but in his young son Dylan Blue the hormones begin their first rage. Chenoweth does bond somewhat with Broderick's wife Kristin Davis.Broderick's pride and joy is his own tastefully decorated house during the Yuletide season. The rather shy and retiring optometrist gets put in the shade by DeVito's gaudy display of Christmas lights. But it's costing him some big bucks for this ostentatious show and eventually his job as a car salesman.These two really start acting like fools over the whole thing. Grownups simply aren't supposed to act the way they do, but Broderick is entering a second childhood and DeVito looks like he never grew up.I can safely say this is not going to be on anyone's list of great Christmas movies though it does beat out Santa Claus Conquers The Martians considerably.

Deck the Halls is a below average film with a storyline that dosen't really go anywhere and while it myth interest children under the age of seven,everyone else would be smart enough to understand this movie is terribly written and just not funny.While there is good chemistry between Mathew Broderick and Danny DeVito,two comedy actors I really enjoy, it dosen't make up for the poor dialogue and the complete lack of Christmas magic.I would not recommend Deck the Halls to anyone,certainly not as a movie to watch with the family at Christmas time,avoid this movie.A family man's peaceful Christmas plans with his family are ruined when their new neighbours intend on their Christmas lights to be literally visible from space.

A very, very weird film which can't decide whether it's one thing or the other, raunchy comedy or wholesome family film. Either we should have the competition between the 2 fathers ramped up to an absurd degree in order to produce some hysterical comedy or they should tone down the adult humour a little and make it a family film.De Vito and Broderick are always watchable but they do very little in these roles. The conclusion of the film lacks credibility, we care little for these men and they're not really very likable. Their wives by contrast are a lot more appealing but just left as wooden stereotypes who really don't develop all that much. It's the sexual comedy that is really puzzling, who thought to bring that in? We have Broderick's son lusting after De Vito's (admittedly sexy as hell) twin blonde daughters but we're told they're only 15 and he himself seems far too young to be so enamoured of them upon their first meeting and playing peeping tom into their bedroom with his binoculars. We also have the part where the 2 men's three daughters put on a sexy Santa's helpers dance routine in high heels, fishnets and Xmas mini-dresses so revealing they blatantly expose their underwear. As I thought with the similar scene in Mean Girls would any Christmas fair really allow that? (and how come Broderick's Avril Lavigne style teen goth rebel daughter is taking part? It's like the twins have seduced her into bimbodom?) Even if it wasn't their daughters they were leering over the sight of Broderick and De Vito screaming 'Who's your daddy?' at them is just creepy as can be. Although admittedly the next scene where they dad's wash their eyes out with Holy Water was quite funny.So, a very curious mixture that doesn't really work too well, I'm amazed it did so well at the box office.

Expanding on a plot strand if you can call it that, from both a "Simpsons" episode and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", this Christmas feud has a few mild laughs but not much else going for it. It really is quite strangely cast in my opinion, Matthew Broderick exuding zero charisma as the Christmas control freak threatened by upstart neighbour Danny DeVito's arrival on the scene with his po' white trash wife and two nubile teenage daughters. It all escalates when DeVito hits on the idea of wanting his Christmas decorations to be seen from outer space, putting Broderick's nose still further out of joint with ever more extravagant lighting displays before the inevitable reconciliation in time for the happy ending.DeVito's casting is suspect too, he must be about plenty-something years older than his screen wife here, who likewise seems too young to be the mother of their daughters. The narrative is bitty and episodic, lacking laugh-out-load set-pieces and the interacting of the leads is similarly nondescript. Minor characters flit across the screen, most bizarrely a cross-dressing police officer, but none engage the attention much.There are plenty of Christmas songs on the soundtrack as you'd expect, but even these, to my ears, seem less widely-known and rarely seem to aid the story itself. In fact the brightest thing on show are the fantastic light displays on DeVito's house with the acting pretty flat all round, even DeVito seeming bored by the proceedings.On the whole then, a somewhat disappointing movie which tries too hard to exude seasonal jollity