REVIEWED - SURVIVING CHRISTMAS: A cold-hearted advertising executive takes the advice of a friendly shrink and returns to the house he grew up in to exorcise grim memories of Christmases long past. Overcome with the desire for a merry yuletide, he pays the current inhabitants a quarter of a million dollars to pretend to be his family,  Donald Clarke.

Keeping in mind that the hero is played by Ben Affleck, a career immolator to compare with Mickey Rourke, readers could be forgiven for expecting Surviving Christmas to be the sort of film that causes milk to curdle, planes to fall from the sky and the firstborn to be born with cloven hooves.

But actually this undemanding comedy is really not so dreadful. Catherine O'Hara and James Gandolfini deliver terrifically mean-spirited and acidic turns as Ben's temporary parents, and Christina Applegate brings her customary sarkiness to the outraged oldest daughter. Until its last 10 minutes, when sentimentality totally takes over, the film has more in common with the pleasantly disreputable Bad Santa than this week's other Scrooge-in-suburban-Chicago flick, Christmas With The Kranks.

That said, Affleck - gurning, flailing and yelping like a man being sucked into a vat of brandy butter - really is ghastly beyond belief. One suspects the writers worked with Mr Stiller in mind, would have accepted Mr Carrey and could have just about endured Mr Sandler. Old Squarehead perhaps appeared between, oh I don't know, F. Murray Abrahams and John Nettles in their list of preferred leads.