Since it’s December, I feel impelled to post something related to the Great Debate – what is the best Christmas movie?
Arguably, the Great Debate is actually whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. This debate comes down to whether you believe that a movie that happens to take place around Christmas time – such as Die Hard or, say, Gremlins – is a Christmas movie the same way a movie about Christmas itself – How the Grinch Stole Christmas! or A Christmas Story, for example.
I’m going to skip that debate and include both schools of thought. I’m on solid ground. According to the Rotten Tomatoes Christmas movie ranker a Christmas movie can fall into either category. Rotten Tomatoes (hereafter “RT”) throws in all the movies above and many others, including some that I had no idea had any Christmas element.1
Also, this post is about my favorite Christmas movie, not the objective best. Based on their formula, RT puts The Shop Around the Corner at the top of their list. Number One. I’ve seen Shop Around the Corner and liked it – it has Jimmy Stewart, of course it’s great! – but it does not even make my finalists.
The question for me is this: if I’m looking to be entertained while feeling good around the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, what movie would I watch?
Here we go:
Honorable Mentions:
Gremlins It’s hilarious and gross. And kind of a miracle it even got made. Plus, who can forget Rockin’ Ricky?
The Holdovers A bit too recent for nostalgia purposes (though I’ve already seen it twice) but give it some time. I love Giamatti in this.
While You Were Sleeping World, we’d like to introduce you to Sandra Bullock.
and Catch Me If You Can An all time favorite movie of mine with Leo and Hanks at the top of their game. There is more Christmas in this movie than I first realized.
All right, with those very HMs out of the way, our countdown commences:
#5 National Lampoons Christmas Vacation (1989) (#64 on the Rotten Tomatoes list)
I unintentionally started referring to this movie as Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation years ago and I understand why. It is peak Chevy Chase from start to finish. Clark Griswold just wants to give his family and loved ones a perfect old fashioned family Christmas. High jinks ensue.
Any good Christmas movie has to have some tender moments, even a straight up comedy like this. My favorite is when Clark’s dad appreciates his son’s work to illuminate the house – “It’s a beaut, Clark!” as an emotional Clark gushes back, “Thanks, Dad, you taught me everything I know about exterior illumination.”
The whole cast comes through. Obviously Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie, but also Beverly D’Angelo as Clark’s sympathetic and supportive wife. Enjoy pre-Seineld Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the hot, hip, and harassed next-door neighbor. And I didn’t know until today that Johnny Galecki of more recent Big Bang Theory fame played Clark’s son, Rusty!
Favorite scene: For me, it has to be the entire Christmas light illumination scene, especially when the lights flip on for the first time – cue grand strains of “O Come All Ye Faithful” along with the town’s auxiliary nuclear power source. And the neighbors getting blinded. Genius.
Incidentally, Mrs. Anysecondnow can’t watch this movie – Cousin Eddie is just too much for her. But I’d say that’s the mark of an actor doing his job well, right?
#4 Die Hard (1988) (#11 on the RT list)
If Die Hard is going to be a Christmas movie, then it’s going to be high on my list because, wow, what a ride.
Die Hard is one of the greatest action movies ever made with many bonus points for how unexpected it all was. Apparently, no one could picture Bruce Willis as an action hero. People actually laughed during the trailer according to Netlix’s Movies That Made Us documentary series (a must-watch if you like Die Hard).
As a teenager, I had no pre-conceived notions about Bruce Willis and loved Die Hard from the beginning, seeing it at least three or four times in the theater. I brought several of my dates to watch it with me. I doubt they were .
Also some shout outs to my favorite movie villain, Alan Rickman, in his Hollywood debut; Bonnie Bedelia going head to head with the Shakespeare trained Rickman; and the TV journalist everyone loves to hate, played by William Atherton (basically reprising his Ghostbusters Walter Peck role).
None of the sequels lived up to the original (though I rather liked Live Free or Die Hard) but we’ll always have “Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs. . . “
Favorite scene: Showing off Die Hard’s exemplary mix of action and humor, I’m going with the tipping point scene where McClane drops a body on Al Powell’s police car to get his attention. Cut to Argyle the limo driver obliviously rockin’ out to a Stevie Wonder tune in the limo back seat, while in the background Powell and his police car frantically flee the scene going way off road. In reverse. It’s at 4:07 in the clip.
#3 How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) (#43 on the RT list)
We finally made it out of the 1980s (but we’ll be back!) with this 25 minute holiday gem.
A staple of December seasonal programming in the pre-VHS and DVD days, Grinch somehow only lands at the #43 spot under RT’s secret formula despite a 100% fresh rating. 100% sounds about right. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love this show. The overlong, unfunny, astronomically bigger budget 2000 live action Jim Carrey version only underscores the 1966 perfection.
Every time I watch Grinch – and we watch it every December – I feel like it should be screened in film schools as a shining example of how to create a compelling movie story.
Any viewer – from a 3 year old to a 103 year old – can grasp the conflict within the first few minutes – the Grinch hates the Who Christmas because they’re too loud! And then we are dying to know What. Happens. Next. Grinch paces the action perfectly, pausing momentarily with a little amusing song or vignette, before racing off again to the next scene.
Boris Karloff some memorable voice work and the animation is simple but magnificent. Check out the various Grinch facial expressions throughout, especially this one. And those teeth!
Never too sweet or too mean or scary, we always smile like this when Grinch is showing.
Favorite scene: Almost any scene with the Grinch’s woebegone sidekick dog, Max, who probably just wants to hang out with the Whos. He gets his wish at the end.
#2 Scrooged (1988) (#67 on RT list)
And we’re back to the late 80s. There is some divided opinion on Scrooged and Murray’s performance, but I like it. Bottom line, if you like Bill Murray, and I generally do, you’re probably going to like Scrooged. it’s his movie and I’d say they got the right guy. Murray plays Mr. Frank Cross, a classic curmudgeon and total schmuck. I feel like Bill is probably playing himself a bit here, just much more intense. “Have you tried staples?”
This movie, like Grinch, is about transformation. Mr. Cross, a fictional IBC entertainment CEO loves high broadcast ratings and despises people. If great ratings result from ruining someone else’s life, even better. A visit from his now dead former boss, then various Christmas ghosts, along with his old girlfriend, , turn him around.
Favorite scene: Has to be the final scene. Sufficiently terrified by the Ghost of Christmas future, a now transformed Mr. Cross interrupts the live broadcast of his own Christmas Eve show to proclaim the sheer joy of doing good: “The miracle can happen to you!”
Murray’s heartfelt monologue then rolls into a joyous “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”, ending in Murray breaking the fourth wall and exhorting movie theater audiences to join in the singing. I’d like to think this actually happened in a few theaters.
It didn’t in mine. I was watching with one of my teenage crushes, Brooke, and wanted to sing along as Murray was urging us. I didn’t have the guts.
#1 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) (#10 on RT)
Is this the greatest American movie ever? It’s on my short list. The American Film Institute initially put it at #11 on their top 100 movies list. IMDB has it at #21.
It wasn’t always so. Many critics panned It’s A Wonderful Life for being too sentimental when it first came out. It actually lost money. (However, it did score 5 Oscar noms, including Best Picture, so clearly there were plenty of people who thought it was pretty good at the time.)
It’s A Wonderful Life only got popular when the studio didn’t bother to renew the copyright in the early 1970s. Television networks realized they had a nostalgic holiday movie they could show during the Christmas season without paying royalties, and so they did. And a mostly forgotten movie became an American film icon. People adore this movie.
I have a theory of why It’s A Wonderful Life got popular decades after its release: It reminds us Americans of a time that never really was.
People watch it and feel nostalgia for their youth. Or what they picture as their youth and what America used to be. When everyone lived in a town called Bedford Falls and looked out for each other and obeyed the law and hardly ever cussed.
“You couldn’t make that movie today, it’s too sentimental,” we say, “but that’s what life was like back in the 1940s.” I suspect most of us know that America was never quite as good as depicted in It’s A Wonderful Life. Although we like to think it was, even though there was crime, corruption, abuse, and nastiness as much as today. Even more in some cases.2 If you were a different color, or a woman, you are far more free in America today than you were in 1946.
For me the pull of this movie is that it shows what America aspires to be. We yearn to be this good, to rally around George Bailey, and I think that is wonderful.
Favorite scene: I’m giving an honorable mention here to the very funny scene where George first meets his guardian angel, Clarence. Bailey’s cynicism against Clarence’s earnestness while they dry out in the toll bridge hut always cracks me up.
But of course my favorite scene – everybody’s favorite scene – is the end when George realizes he’s alive again. George Bailey’s pure jubilation of just being alive even when he’s headed to jail always gets me. (Jimmy Stewart was born for this role, right?) Near the end, we get that magnificent toast – “To my big brother George, the richest man in town!” – from his war hero brother and then a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne. I mean, come on.
This scene is the first time I cried while watching a movie (and trying to hide it from my Mom in our living room).
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to us all.
- This probably says something about our society, but RT has a separate Christmas horror movie ranking. There are 50 titles. My daughter has probably seen many of these. Moving on . . .
↩︎ - Even It’s A Wonderful Life itself shows that things weren’t always peachy. The critical plot point in the movie centers on an already too rich guy — Mr. Potter — who steals $8K (equivalent to almost $150K today). Mr. Potter then happily tries to frame the rightful owner of the money for embezzlement so he can then foreclose on townspeople’s mortgages. And he doesn’t get caught. ↩︎
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