Tim Allen’s Christmas flop tried to advertise itself as the new ‘Passion of the Christ’

On By Littum

Tim Allen is obviously very closely associated with Christmas movies, mostly because of the time he killed Santa Claus, stole all his clothes, and then assumed the identity of the immortal elf. But Allen has also made a couple of holiday movies that have absolutely nothing to do with it intricate mythology about santa claus-verse.

Most notably there were the 2004s Christmas with the Sickwhich found Allen and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis playing a married couple who decide to skip their annual Christmas celebration and spend their money on a Caribbean cruise instead. As a result of this holiday transgression, they are ostracized by their neighbors and punished by the universe.

Despite that Christmas with the Sick was a wacky Tim Allen comedy based on a book by John “I need something mindless to read on this plane” Grisham, and not a drenched biblical adaptation, the creators of Christmas with the Sick decided to take their marketing cues from Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ.

Don’t miss out

The Gibson film opened in February 2004, nine months before the release of the Christmas with the Sick. And the film’s success was clearly on the cards Crank crew during filming. Curtis recalled in an interview that her first meeting with Tim Allen turned into a 20-minute conversation between him, director Joe Roth, and screenwriter Chris Columbus, all about their “interpretations” of The Passion of Christ.

When Crank was released later that year, it had one small problem: the movie stank and critics hated it. It currently has only 5 percent on Rotten tomatoes. But The Passion of Christ had already proven that good reviews weren’t necessary to make money at the box office. So, apparently inspired by Gibson’s approach, the studio behind it Christmas with the Sick launched what New York Times noticed was a “pressure campaign built almost entirely on the support of religious broadcasters and family advocates.”

Businesses like The Austin Chronicle called the movie “extremely mediocre and patently ill-conceived in all departments,” but ads instead cited reviews from faith-based media organizations such as 700 club who proclaimed, “Tim Allen has never been funnier! An instant family classic!”

Although it was pretty clear to industry experts Crank tried to follow The Passion of Christs lucrative formula (minus the flesh wounds and glaring anti-Semitism), one study leader claimed that Crank pull quotes were not intended to send a religious message saying that “the values ​​of the film are Christian values. About the brotherhood of Christians and Jews.”

Of course, how did we not get that from the scene where Allen Botoxes the hell out of his face?

Meanwhile, Allen promoted the film by talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network, telling them that Christmas is “really about the birth of Jesus. And on top of that, you had this other supporting character about Santa Claus. Eventually, as you get older, you combine the two. I still think it’s a dangerous situation’.

Which is definitely a weird thing to hear from the same guy who made a movie where Santa saves Christmas by fighting a time-traveling Jack Frost.

Did the strategy work? Well, Christmas with the Sick remade $90 million worldwide on a $60 million budget. So it was a critical disaster, but a minor box office success.

Arguably, it would have made it a lot better if they had committed to it and crucified Allen’s character at the end.