Battle of the Bulbs

2010 1h 29m English 5.4

Comedy, Family

Going out every year, Bob Wallace, supported quietly by his family, is determined to improve on his forty-first place finish last year in the Richmond CA Mayor's Christmas house decorating competition, he at least wanting to have what is deemed the best decorated house on the block this year if nothing else, which he seems sure to achieve. That certainty becomes less certain with a family just moved in across the street that has decorated their house just as ostentatiously Christmas. Already irked by someone else who may have a better decorated house on the block, Bob becomes even more irked when he discovers the new owner and decorator of said house is Stu Jones, his arch enemy for twenty-five years, they once best friends in childhood until the end of high school when they had a falling out over, what else, a competition in what Bob saw as Stu's dirty pool in wanting to win, the dirty pool which only escalated in Bob wanting to win, neither who eventually did win. With the animosity between the two men only increased since they last having seen each other in those buried feelings now coming to the surface, Bob and Stu go out of their way to one up the latest decorating move made by the other. But when the competition between the two returns to the realm of dirty pool, it may affect the largely cordial relationship between their wives, Mindy Wallace and Mary Jones, and the budding puppy love romance between their teenage children, Susie Wallace and Chip Jones. The question then becomes if there is anything that can open Bob and Stu's eyes to the fact of they once having been best friends, those two friends who still exist behind the feud.—Huggo