Surviving Christmas will certainly do nothing to stabilize Ben Affleck's flagging stock which, in this instance, is unfortunate. I'm not suggesting that this is a good film, but Affleck is actually quite good in it. That smirk and frat boy charm is perfectly utilized in this poorly written holiday flick that aspires to be a Christmas movie for people who don't like Christmas movies.

In Surviving Christmas Ben Affleck is Drew Latham, a lonely millionaire who wants a little holiday spirit. To get it, he decides to go back to the house where he grew up and is quite surprised to find a dysfunctional couple living there with their teenage son. Determined to at last feel the Christmas spirit, he offers a large sum of cash to the Valco family (played by James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara and Josh Zuckerman) if they'll allow him to stay there through the holidays and pretend to be his family. Given that the sum is a tidy quarter million, the Valco's agree, and before long, Drew turns their already unhappy little lives even further upside down.

Affleck is amusing and I prefer to see him in this type of role, as opposed to the action thing we've seen him do for the past few years. James Gandolfini is surprisingly dry, and appears bored throughout most of the proceedings. O'Hara has some funny moments including a raunchy photo shoot that provides some of the bigger laughs in the movie.

All in all, Surviving Christmas plays like a predictable sitcom in which little white lies turn into great big lies, and bad situations spiral wildly out of control. Unfortunately, the movie is painfully unfunny. It offers up scattershot laughs (many of the poorly-concieved mean-spirited variety) but not nearly enough for a recommendation.

If you're not a big fan of Christmas films, may I suggest Bad Santa or The Ref, two hilarious efforts that this picture can't hold a candle to. In both of those movies, the laughs were plentiful and the holiday spirit unveiled in a most unconventional way. And proved that mean-spirited jokes are hilarious if they're well-written. Surviving Christmas by comparison, was tough to survive.