As is obvious to anyone who has attempted to find parking at a mall recently, the holiday season has arrived and is in full swing. The overflowing parking lots are just another example of how out of control Christmas has gotten. Still, no matter how out of control commercialization gets, holiday traditions will continue to serve as the weight that keeps the scale from tipping too far in its favor.

The new Christmas comedy Deck the Halls centers around one of the most popular holiday traditions: Christmas lights. I remember my parents driving my sister and me through various local neighborhoods where we would stop to marvel at the best of our town’s lighting displays. It seemed like each year they would get bigger, brighter, and more spectacular. Some houses, I believed, had to have been visible from space.

Space becomes the final frontier for Buddy Hall. A born salesman (he can sell a used car lot owner a car off his own lot), Buddy has held numerous jobs, but none of them have given him the satisfaction of a job well done. He wants to do something monumental in his life, something for which people will remember him. When his teenage daughters find a website that can view their new neighborhood from space, and their own house is undetectable, Buddy believes he has found his calling: he must make his house visible from space. Soon Buddy has created the most spectacular lighting display ever assembled, and yet he continues to work on it into the wee hours of the morning.

This does not sit well with Buddy’s new neighbor, Steve Finch. A traditionalist who has his family’s entire holiday schedule planned out (“December third, put up the wreath”), Steve considers Buddy a nuisance. Not only that, but Steve has always considered himself as the town’s “Christmas guy,” and when Buddy’s decorations become the talk of the town, his annoyance develops into jealousy. When Steve takes his revenge with some late-night electrical espionage, a bitter rivalry is born.

Director John Whitesell understands the importance of tradition; but he also understands that too much tradition is not necessarily a good thing. He uses the contrast between the traditionalistic Steve and the spontaneous Buddy to illustrate that there needs to be a happy medium. After all, aren’t the most memorable of holiday memories the ones that weren’t planned? Even Steve admits that his best Christmas memory growing up was a happy accident.

Despite this memory, Steve leaves nothing to chance. He even has a reserved section of a tree lot where his family’s next five Christmas trees are lined up, ready to be cut down and decorated. Where’s the fun in hunting for that perfect Christmas tree if you already know which one you’re going to get? Nonetheless, even a spontaneous household needs to be balanced with some tradition, as Whitesell demonstrates using a priceless family heirloom belonging to Buddy’s wife.

In its first forty-five minutes or so, Deck the Halls shows flashes of a becoming a delightful Christmas treasure. There are laughs aplenty, and it is easy to identify with both the Steve’s growing frustration and Buddy’s ambition. Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito, as Steve and Buddy, are both enjoyable, despite the fact that each seems to have fallen into a bit of a typecasting rut.

The movie’s second half, however, falls flat as the rivalry between Steve and Buddy turns childish and virtually humorless. Meanwhile, it is all building towards one of the all-time cheesiest endings, in a genre that is known for its cheesy endings.

The movie definitely has its share of laughs, and, although it may not become a Christmas tradition, it provides an entertaining escape from the cold weather outside. Just remember to take the scenic route to the theater and check out your town’s own Christmas light spectaculars. Who knows? Maybe there are even a few the astronauts could enjoy.

The film is rated PG “for some crude and suggestive humor, and for language.” This is an accurate rating. There are a couple of relatively dirty jokes that the kids probably won’t get, but mostly it is just good old-fashioned holiday movie humor. The rating also applies to some relatively prominent cleavage.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jeff attended a promotional screening of Deck the Halls.