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SURVIVING CHRISTMAS Last year, we got Bad Santa; this year, we get Bad Movie. Unlike the Billy Bob Thornton hit, which for the most part kept its dark heart pumping bile right through to the end, this misguided Yuletide farce tries to have it both ways by dribbling watery drops of black comedy into the more familiar foundation of eggnog-sweet sentimentality. The film gets into trouble the moment its feeble plotline is introduced: Wealthy Drew Latham (Ben Affleck) doesn't want to spend Christmas alone, so he offers a suburban family $250,000 if they'll just pretend to be his family for the holidays. Affleck's character is so unbelievably obnoxious throughout the movie that when he's made his miraculous transformation by the end, it's hard to tell exactly how, when or why he had been redeemed. 1/2

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone attempt to offend everyone with this film that's cast entirely with marionettes. The title outfit -- super-macho warriors willing to destroy the world in order to stop the terrorist threat (there goes the Eiffel Tower; there go the pyramids) -- is a Republican president's wet dream, as is the notion of depicting liberal Hollywood actors like Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin as anti-American stooges who suffer gruesome deaths for opposing our valiant heroes. Juvenile? Sure. Funny? Certainly -- though not nearly as often as one might reasonably expect from these guys. The comic highlights are punched across at regular intervals, but once the novelty of the puppets wears off, the movie has trouble sustaining its length -- or its level of outrageousness. 1/2