We’ve bitten off the better part of the first week of December. That certainly makes it Christmas movie time without complaints that it’s “too early for Christmas!” Personally, I watched my first Christmas movie for this year, this year’s new favorite Christmas movie, on Thanksgiving night and I’ll watch it again at least once a week until Christmas Eve. More about that later.
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I haven’t done a rant on what makes a Christmas movie for a few years and it’s probably time to revisit that topic lest some of you try to use the season as an excuse to pull out Die Hard from your old VHS library. Yes, there is a Christmas tree in the ball room or whatever that room was supposed to be. If it was the company’s reception area that was the grandest display of corporate opulence even by movie standards. Anyway, the presence of a Christmas tree is not the defining factor of what makes a Christmas movie, otherwise The Poseidon Adventure, Gremlins, and Eyes Wide Shut would be experiencing revivals at your local Bijou every December.
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Along with characters and plot, movies have to have a setting. Even if it’s an indeterminate long ago and far away they take place at some time in some place. Sometimes the some time is around Christmas. The Shop Around the Corner (which grew up to become You’ve Got Mail) and Untamed Heart are two movies that spend a lot of time around Christmas yet neither identifies as a Christmas movie. The production companies, distributors, and audiences recognize them as love stories and if some scenes have a Christmas tree it is just creating a believable setting.
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Every once in a while things get more than a little confusing in that regard. In 1947 George Haigt, and Robert Montgomery, and MGM Studios teamed up to present Lady in the Lake, a Steve Fisher adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1943 novel of the same name featuring private detective Philip Marlowe. Movies don’t often mimic the books from which they are adapted, in fact you can say they rarely are on the same page. Chandler’s readers were probably confused right from the opening credits of the movie which were presented in a series of Christmas cards with popular Christmas carols providing the background music. Throughout the movie, Christmas trees and wreaths are prominently displayed, holiday greetings are offered and returned, the season is toasted, gifts are exchanged, and one scene opens with a recitation of Dickens “A Christmas Carol” playing on the radio. All from a book whose action takes place entirely in mid-summer in a movie that was released in late January. Christmas movie? Um, no.
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But fear not Christmas movie lovers, there are scads of films, old standbys and newer releases, that will transform the Scroogiest viewers into holly, jolly revelers without ambiguity – movies that add punch to any nog and present their presents wrapped in bows and delivered with care. Everyone has a favorite and every favorite has an ardent following. Yours may be a classic in black and white or an animated interpretation of a classic tale. It could be a big budget musical or an independent dark horse. It’s your favorite because you identify with a character or are reminded of an event every time you hear the title song. Or perhaps it offers a dream holiday you know you will not experience in your own life. Or, like my current favorite, offers an experience almost exactly like my own life.
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I say my current favorite because like children there can be no real favorite among Christmas movies. The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday, the one encouraging a perfect alternative to an imperfect world and providing an escape from the ordinary. My current favorite is full of imperfections. Imperfect characters making imperfect plans, and ordinary people doing ordinary holiday things while dealing with ordinary year long problems. With all that mediocrity come the glimpses of joy and the fleeting feelings of fun that accompany real people living real lives. Before the closing credits roll you are smiling at them and yourself and ready to get back to whatever is next on your to do list only now you do it with that song running through your head. And not annoyingly.
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My current favorite Christmas movie for this year is Love the Coopers. It’s so unmovielike! It asks you to suspend very little disbelief and quite believably could be about any family, including mine. You want to give them all back but you can’t because you love them so dearly. Love the Coopers, I think it needs a comma but Steven Rogers didn’t and it’s his story so I guess he should know. Maybe it’s more commanding that way. Or maybe it’s supposed to be just a little ambiguous. Just like us.
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Merry Early Christmas!
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I hate to admit it but this is one I missed. I’ll fix that as soon as I re-watch Lethal Weapon (Christmas movie? I think not.) cheers
I saw it several years ago and completely forgot about it until I saw it on the TV listings and gave it re-watch. I enjoyed it even if it didn’t have shootings, explosions, and people falling out of buildings like a proper holiday movie.
Merry so to be Christmas!
Way better than that charlatan “Home Alone.”
I even think better than that other cult hero. You knew he was going to shoot his eye out.
When I was a kid — kids had BB guns — and despite the dire warnings nobody shot their eye out, although Wilfred took one in the foot, once.