Some festive folks started early watching happy Christmas themed movies on the Hallmark Channel week ago.
It always happens. Right after Halloween, the world shifts into Christmas mode..
We forget Thanksgiving..
Films seem to do the same.
But alas! There are some movies that are based around the holiday..
So turn off the Hallmark channel, at least until Black Friday, and watch these this week.
And yes, being selfish, we will name only those we think are most worth watching.
5: ALICE’S RESTAURANT: In this comedy, adapted from Arlo Guthrie’s folk song, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” Guthrie stars as himself on a trip to his friend’s home for Thanksgiving after being kicked out of college. Having enrolled in college to dodge the draft, the events of the night unravel into an ironic full circle.
If you never heard the song, grab a snack, sit back, and give it a LONG listen:
4: ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES from 1993: This sequel features a storyline of a family is thrown into turmoil when a new nanny has her sights on Uncle Fester—and plans on marrying him for his riches before killing him off. Wednesday and Pugsley know something’s up, but Debbie convinces Gomez and Morticia to send them to summer camp—where they are forced to participate in a musical rendition of the first Thanksgiving.
3: GRUMPY OLD MEN: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are two bitter lifelong rivals in Wabasha, Minnesota.. That conflict includes an amusing Thanksgiving dinner, in which the two do their best to act like feuding children.
(HONORARY MENTION) YOU’RE NEXT: We had to throw a horror film in here.. and YOU’RE NEXT is as close to Thanksgiving as a horror could get. But it never names that as the holiday.. we are backed up in our premise that this really is a Thanksgiving movie by the horror site BLOODY DISGUSTING. They have the street cred to formulate this hypothesis about the film:
So, technically not a Thanksgiving centered movie, but it checks off so many boxes that it might as well count. Lead heroine Erin (Sharni Vinson) accompanies her boyfriend Crispian (A.J. Bowen) for a family reunion. Awkward family interactions, tension between siblings and underlying resentments all sounds on par for a typical Thanksgiving gathering. Most holiday themed of all, though, is the explosive dinner where things really begin to spiral out of control for the Davison family. Humorous as it is tense, You’re Next is a fun reminder that your holiday could always be worse.
2: MALL COP: Only the first one counts in my eyes, the second tore the storyline to pieces. Kevin James played Paul Blart, a lonely mall cop who met a woman and saves the day on Black Friday.. But the movie counts for me as a Thanksgiving flick because the funniest scenes come prior to the great Black Friday caper, the mall preparation for the shopping extravaganza, and the drunken Thanksgiving Eve party night that gave us this scene:
1: PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES: This is the best Thanksgiving movie of them all! Steve Martin plays an executive who wants to get home to New York for Thanksgiving, while John Candy’s is a shower-ring salesman who constantly ruins those plans.. This film has always been my favorite Thanksgiving movie.. And like any John Hughes movie, it is filled with nostalgic images of the 80s, a funny storyline, but also a poignantly sad premise: John Candy is not just a buffoon.. He is a lonely man whose wife died years ago, and he still cannot get over the immense sadness of her departure. Steve Martin is a selfish trendy, or a yuppie since it was the Reagan 80s, who is forced to see life from the eyes of someone else for a change.. The movie ends with a mystery.. will John Candy enter the family circle? Will he just stay for dinner and be gone ? No sequels necessary. You can play it out in your mind. But the film also gave us one of the best scenes ever in a movie, with the help of Ray Charles:
