studioAT This film about two rival neighbours competing to have the best Christmas lights should have been great, ITV did a one off Drama about a similar scenario and pulled it off well, but this is a mess.The worst thing is that it wastes a great cast, led by Matthew Broderick and Danny De Vito, but nothing can paper over the fact that this film has a weak script, and actually, a poor sense of Christmas spirit.I know at this time of year people will watch anything remotely festive, but this film has the potential to make anyone a Scrooge.

SnoopyStyle Mild-mannered optometrist Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) loves Christmas. He lives with his wife (Kristin Davis) and kids (Alia Shawkat, Dylan Blue). He plans his Christmas starting from December first. He organizes Winterfest for his town of Cloverdale, Massachusetts. Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito), his wife (Kristin Chenoweth) and their hot twin daughters move in across the street. Buddy is a new car salesman who is able to sell a car to the dealership's owner. However he can't stick to one thing. He puts up his Christmas lights to be seen from space. Steve starts getting annoyed with Buddy.I didn't laugh once and I'm not sure exactly why. Matthew Broderick plays it like a lesser Jim McAllister from Election. Danny DeVito play it a bit normal. Neither is likable. I don't care about them. I don't care about Steve and his passive aggressive issues. The wives aren't that compelling. The kids do a couple of things but nothing funny. The whole movie feels flat. I'm not annoyed or angry. I just feel nothing for this movie.

EQRehab Like most Christmas gifts, I had high hopes that were dashed upon the rocks of disappointment. Great cast yet poor execution and lame story plot. The characters did not seem to have a chemistry with each other. Matthew Broderick and Kristin Davis did not mesh well as a married couple. Danny DeVito and Kristen Chenoweth's characters were far fetched and completely unbelievable. I guess this was supposed to be funny in itself? This brings me to the lack of laughs. I found myself looking for something funny half way through the movie since this was supposed to be a comedy, but I never found it. This movie was very disappointing and was a sad attempt at humor.

jc-osms 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