Starring Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick. Rated general.

Snoopy did it, to Charlie Brown’s chagrin: decorated his doghouse for Christmas, that is. Now, with Danny DeVito adopting a similar tactic as a beastly human provocateur and Matthew Broderick acting an apoplectic blockhead, Deck the Halls boards the holiday-movie gravy train so we can all learn the true meaning of Christmas. Again. For the love of Christ, we think—recalling Linus’s humble recital in A Charlie Brown Christmas, internalized when we were knee-high to a Chatty Cathy—surely we know what the day is about by now? Nevertheless, we endure a series of childish tit for tats and exploding Christmas trees along the two men’s predictable path (see Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, Mr. Grinch, et al) to spiritual metamorphosis. Oh, well, at least the snow looked real.

In the earnestly acted, Vancouver-shot film, a beagle-eyed DeVito plays Buddy Hall. Yes, as in “deck the”. A car salesman who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing, he obsessively decorates his home in the hopes it can be seen from space. As his nemesis, Broderick is Steve Finch, a snippy Massachusetts optometrist who is shortsighted as to the season’s purpose. As head of the town’s winter festival and annual speed-skating race—Broderick poured into a bright-orange skin suit could be classified as the true nightmare before Christmas—he’s darn tootin’ it has something to do with Martha Stewart–grade décor. Rounding and squaring out the cast are Kristin Chenoweth as Hall’s sassy spouse and Kristin Davis as Finch’s perky wife.

The screenwriters were not content to embellish the doghouse scenario from writer-artist Charles M. Schulz’s Charlie Brown Christmas. Also filtered through Hollywood are the 1965 TV cartoon classic’s dancing twins. Now formulated as Hall’s DNA-matched, willowy, blond teen daughters, they traipse about in angel-hair mukluks to keep the dads in the audience alert. Another Schulz rip-off? The hapless Finch carts home the live-action version of Chuck’s squat, anorexic tree. Good grief!

Christians might be the only folks willing to forgive the film’s lack of originality and gratuitous sexual suggestiveness. That’s because from its live Nativity scene to the crucifix dangling precariously above Chenoweth’s deep cleavage to a treacly Peanuts-style carolling of “O Holy Night”, Deck the Halls puts the Christ, if not joy to the world, back into Christmas.