In the middle of the night on December 1, new neighbors move in across the street: car salesman and electrical engineer Buddy Hall and his trophy wife Tia, both of whom Steve and Kelly meet the next morning.

Steve manages to sabotage his lights by filling his fusebox with snowballs, but a backup generator foils his plan.

Buddy discovers the sabotage and retaliates by stealing the town's Christmas tree, putting it in Steve's house, and "buying" him a car.

Having had enough, Steve buys various fireworks including The Atomic Warlord, a large, illegal, military-grade rocket from a gangster and tries to destroy the Hall house.

SuChin Pak, doing the MTV report, gets confirmation from MyEarth that the house is indeed visible from space, and the crowd celebrates.

[7] Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel named it "A leaden slice of fruitcake, with about as much nutritional value," and concluding that "it's not worth working up a good hate over".

Stephen Hunter remarked "I literally didn't count a single laugh in the whole aimless schlep," and suggested that the film should have been named Dreck the Halls instead.

It is bad in a way that will cause unfortunate viewers to huddle in the lobby afterward, hugging in small groups, consoling one another with the knowledge that it's over, it's over -- thank God, it's over.

[...] Compared to the honest hard labor performed by tens of millions of Americans every day, a film critic's job is like a winning lottery ticket.

But there IS work involved, and it can be painful -- and the next time someone tells me I have the best job in the world, I'm going to grab them by the ear, fourth-grade-teacher-in-1966-style, and drag them to see Deck the Halls."