Each year, studios do their best to capitalize on the holiday season by releasing a multitude of pictures revolving around Christmas. Popular successes (“Home Alone,” “Elf,” “Bad Santa”) and box office failures (“Jingle All the Way,” “Stepmom,” “All I Want for Christmas”) abound to great excess in both directions, the lure of mixing Yule-tide emotionalism with crass Hollywood commercialism too much for studio execs to ignore. This year’s crop of Santa-clad flicks includes Robert Zemeckis’ “The Polar Express,” Jude Law in “Alfie” and “Christmas with the Kranks” starring Tim Allen (no stranger to Christmas as the star of two “Santa Clause” movies) and Jamie Lee Curtis. And while none of these – at least on paper – looks likely to compare with “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Miracle on 34^th Street” (the original, of course), I’m still hopeful at least one will turn out to be at least passably entertaining.

That’s certainly not the case with the first flick out of the holiday box, the long-delayed “Surviving Christmas” starring Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini. A mish-mash of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “Bad Santa,” this new film from “Greg the Bunny” creator Mike Mitchell is a complete mess. And that’s a shame, because bits and pieces work surprisingly well, while both Gandolfini and the luminous Catherine O’Hara share a broken, honestly disheveled chemistry that pleads for a much better movie. But for all the spit-taking laughs (and there are a few), this movie simply does not work, a screenplay full of tired ideas and direction that’s tantamount to strangulation ruining any potential “Surviving Christmas” might have once had.

Affleck plays Drew Latham, a self-centered advertising executive who’s made millions shilling out products nobody needs. For him, Christmas is all about escape, and a trip to Tahiti with long-time girlfriend Missy (Jennifer Morrison, and I can’t think of a worse performance I’ve seen all year) is the best possible present this sad-sack millionaire can imagine. But when she angrily dumps him down and says holidays should be spent with family, Drew is left utterly speechless. Family? What family? He doesn’t even know them.

Enter Tom and Christine Valco (Gandolfini and O’Hara), a typical working class family trying to get the most out of Christmas without resorting to killing one another. After knocking out Drew with a snow shovel, imagine the family’s surprise when upon waking he offers them $250,000 to become a member of their family for the holidays? Christine’s misgivings aside, Tom eagerly agrees, signing a contract forcing the family to acquiesce to all of Drew’s festively embarrassing demands. Suddenly, the house is decked out in garish red and greens, Tom finds he has to wear a Santa cap wherever they go and young son Brian (Josh Zuckerman) is forced out of his bedroom and into the garage. On top of all that, Drew decides to hire an elderly community theater veteran to play the part of the family’s grandfather, affectionately tagging him with the nickname Doo-Dah (Bill Macy).

Quite unsurprisingly, chaos ensues and none of Drew’s best laid plans go as he’d like, especially when 20-something daughter Alicia (Christina Applegate) comes home to visit. The house gets mangled, feelings get hurt, family bonds are tested and even some dirty pictures of Mom somehow find their way onto the internet. But through it all, the tried and true spirit of Christmas finds a way to shine through all the carnage, both the Valco family and Drew learning something new along the way.

Okay, some of this is funny. O’Hara’s photo shoot with an incredibly grimy Udo Kier is a smarmy hoot (in the hands of a less talented actress this whole sequence would be unconscionable, but in hers it’s riot – go figure), while a raucous gathering between Drew’s fake family the Valcos and his girlfriend’s real family the Vangliders is good for a laugh or two. And while that’s all to the good, it doesn’t make the movie a success. Everything is forced. From Affleck’s obscenely over-the-top mugging to Mitchell’s ungainly derivative setups to the script’s layer after layer of pap emotional clichés, it’s just too much to take without feeling pummeled.

No matter how much some of it made me smile, I finally knew “Surviving Christmas” was a lost cause when Drew made a play to win Alicia’s heart. The scene begins tenderly, so much so it caught me off guard, the irksome Affleck finally acting like a human being instead of an obnoxious imbecile. But just as I was on the verge of giving into the actor’s charms and Mitchell’s suddenly graceful direction, things explode into a panoply of off-the-wall theatrics and smarmily schlock over-exuberance complete with nattily dressed little people and figure skating gnomes. It isn’t funny, and doesn’t reveal anything new about the characters other than the fact I didn’t want to spend another moment with them. If anything, all it proved was the accuracy of one of the words in the title, for surviving this movie is far and away the biggest test a person could face.

Hopefully, the rest of the holiday onrush won’t be as much of a chore. A girl can dream, can’t she?