The best Christmas movies make one reminisce and reflect on the true meaning of the holiday. Then, there are the others that seem to be made just for the sake of being made.

For every holiday classic like A Christmas Carol, Miracle On 34th Street, and It's A Wonderful Life, there's the occasionally embarrassing misfiring dud, like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Jingle All The Way, that make you wince at the more overblown aspects of the season. Yet another movie to certainly join the latter is Deck The Halls, now available on DVD.

Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) is the most popular guy in his small town during Christmastime with his overenthusiastic zeal for decorating, family traditions, and the annual Winterfest. Unfortunately, this doesn't suit entirely well with his loving wife Kelly (Kristin Davis) and his two sullen children Madison (Alia Shawkat) and Carter (Dylan Blue).

However, Steve's perfect reign in the neighborhood is about to be challenged when uncouth neighbor Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito), his buxom, young wife Tia (Kristin Chenowith) and his equally buxom twin daughters Ashley and Emily (Sabrina Alridge, Kelly Alridge) move into town. Despite Buddy's seemingly genial wishes to befriend his new neighbors, a rivalry soon escalates between Steve and his new neighbor when Buddy attempts a grand ambition to have house decorations so bright and outlandish that they can be seen from space.

As with Jingle All The Way, Deck The Halls is a movie that tries to use its focus on the rather materialistic side of Christmas in order to poke holes at it. And just like Jingle All The Way, its attempts fail miserably as it suffers from a script that largely fails to connect to the audience in any conceivable way.

Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito are both excellent performers and the rest of the cast is serviceable, if nothing else. But even the considerable charms of its two stars can't bring any life into characters so equally shallow and unlikable.

This brings up its biggest problem, a rather lazy and contrived script. While the movie doesn't go through the motions of stale and unfunny yuletide humor that seems duplicated from much better Christmas comedies, it has a level of crude humor that only alienates audiences even further, leaving a comedy with nothing but condescension and cynicism that serves almost no one.

The DVD picture quality is in the 1:85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with the sound quality in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. The DVD also comes packed with plenty of special features.

The first special feature is audio commentary featuring director John Whitesell and actor Danny DeVito. While it gets a bit lackluster after a while, both Whitesell and DeVito manage to deliver some fairly engaging commentary.

There's also a trio of featurettes included with the DVD. "Construction Of The Homes", shows how the crew designs