WHY HIM? (Rated R)

The holiday spirit always lingers for a while right into the start of January. Some of the films capture the festive mood better than others. “Why Him?” might not be one of them.

In fact, the closest this James Franco film gets into the spirit of Christmas is when he discovers that his misguided attempt to have a tattoo of his girlfriend’s family on his back is actually a portrait image complete with the “Happy Holidays” greeting.

But then you’ve probably already seen this bit from the ubiquitous trailers that pretty much string the best comedic scenes into one incomprehensible package of random acts of lunacy and mayhem.

Franco’s Laird Mayhew is a socially awkward Silicon Valley tech billionaire who is on the opposite end of the spectrum, at least culturally, of his girlfriend’s Midwestern family.

Bryan Cranston’s Ned Fleming is the straight-laced owner of a printing company in Michigan that’s struggling to complete in the digital age.

At Ned’s birthday party, his daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) joins the event via Skype to send well wishes to her dad from her Stanford dorm room.

The Flemings, including Ned’s wife Barb (Megan Mullally) and son Scotty (Griffin Gluck), and their party guests are surprised by the unexpected introduction of her new boyfriend in the buff in the background.

Distraught that his daughter has been hiding a boyfriend, Ned begrudgingly agrees to travel with the family to the West Coast in order to meet her first serious boyfriend during the Christmas holiday.

Ned is mostly shocked to find that Laird is not only about ten years older but is heavily tattooed and wildly inappropriate in his coarse, vulgar manner of casual conversation liberally sprinkled with profanity.

But much worse is to come when Ned faces the meltdown of his life when finding out that the wacky, unfiltered Laird wants to propose to his daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) on Christmas day.

“Why Him?” turns, as you expect from watching the trailers, into a generational battle between Midwestern rectitude and stereotypical California oddball weirdness when Ned and Laird go mano a mano, at least metaphorically.

This cultural divide is understandable given that Ned treats his loyal employees like family, while Laird lives on a “smart home” estate where farm animals roam free and has an eccentric houseboy named Gustav who acts like Cato from the “Pink Panther” films.

Most of the other characters get lost in the shuffle, and in the end, “Why Him?” does have its moments of inspired lunacy, but the gratuitous nature of crude jokes begin to wear thin long before the film ends on an incompatible saccharine note.

TV Corner: 'The Mick' on FOX Network

The same production team that brought the long-running FX network comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to fruition performs similar functions for another primetime comedy, “The Mick,” on the parent network of FOX.

Not surprisingly, Kaitlin Olson, who held her own with the three guys running an Irish tavern in Philly, seems the perfect fit for the degenerate, two-bit hustler from Rhode Island who has spent her entire life shirking any semblance of dependability.

Olson’s Mackenzie, or Mickey to her friends, is introduced wandering through a supermarket, sampling packaged goods from chips and whipped cream to underarm shavers and talcum powder before dropping off a six-pack to a bum with a shopping cart.

Her so-called boyfriend Jimmy (Scott MacArthur), referred to by Mickey only as “my guy,” tags along on a road trip to the rarefied atmosphere of upscale Greenwich, Connecticut.

The occasion is for Mickey to unexpectedly drop in at a fancy lawn party hosted by her estranged sister at the mansion shared with her billionaire husband and three spoiled kids.

In a surprising turn of events, the FBI raids the high-society function to arrest the high profile couple for tax evasion, and Mickey suddenly becomes the unwilling guardian for the high-maintenance children who quickly assess that their aunt is not up to the task.

The oldest is 17-year-old Sabrina (Sofia Black D’Elia), a snooty brat who flaunts her sexuality with a hunky twentysomething carpenter who goes shirtless while working around the house.

Then, there’s the annoying middle child Chip (Thomas Barbusca), an arrogant, entitled 13-year-old nerd who does not know how to make friends at school, let alone to connect with girls even on a platonic level.

Third child Ben (Jack Stanton) is only 7-years-old but he seems keenly interested in whatever the adults are talking about. He also swipes Mickey’s birth control pills because he overhead that they were magical.

What Mickey, an unsuitable parental figure, is asked to do reminds one of a similar role once played by John Candy in a feature film, but unfortunately Mickey doesn’t quite have the same mix of empathy and humor required to make the central character anything more than predictable.

I could be wrong about this, but “The Mick” does not seem likely to have the longevity that was afforded to Kaitlin Olson’s previous TV comedy set in Philadelphia.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.