yock

Ever since the '80s, when "Home Alone" and "A Christmas Story" reconfigured the holiday movie into something that merged nostalgia with knockabout yocks, there's been a "How low can you go?" quality to the annual rite of the Christmas pic.

Zaks--who is credited as creative consultant, with McDermott and Crouch retaining their contractual billing--has clearly guided the rewrites and ramped up the yocks. But Serge Trujillo's choreography is emblematic of the ineffective choices: The ensemble consists of a clump of Addams ancestors who, once out of the crypt, spend the evening adding ghostly, mirthless and unnecessary accents to ineffective production numbers.

Despite frantic efforts to punch up the action with cheap shocks and nasty yocks, "Seed of Chucky" never generates much narrative momentum.

Scatological yocks are totally shameless, and perfs by the east (including Lucy Davis, Dawn in "The Office") likewise.

The little rituals, a walk on from a gibbering idiot and overall sense of existential ennui and despair self-consciously recall "Waiting for Godot," hut without the yocks. Long shots of the stony, occasionally snow-dusted landscape add some visual appeal, and the discordant music contribs atmosphere.

Robert LuPone, as a miserly parent, is a right greedy old curmudgeon, and when confined and pummeled in an oversized flour sack he draws considerable yocks.

Unlike "Spice World," which was a classy production in comparison, "Seeing Double" mistakenly doesn't ballast the movie with experienced thesps or celeb cameos, leaving the Clubbers to try and get yocks from a series of vaguely risque one-liners.