Christmas movies mostly suck. Miracle on 34th Street gives me hives. It’s A Wonderful Life is a depressing story told the wrong way. About half of the Christmas Carol adaptations completely miss the point (the exceptions: Muppet, Disney, Sim and the recent Zemeckis). Even a A Christmas Story gets more treacly and unbearable every year. (I will admit to a fondness for Love Actually, but what makes the film bearable are the bitter moments where things don’t work out. Plus Rowan Atkinson’s cameos.)
This is because Christmas is equal parts joyful and depressing. The good Christmas movies understand this, which is why most of the good Christmas movies are dark: black comedies about the human spirit’s capability for love even under the most degraded of circumstances, like Bad Santa, or hyperactive Dickens-on-crack stories like Scrooged, and Gremlins, which isn’t really a Christmas movie per se but come on, it’s Gremlins.
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“I had this dream -”
“Do we have to do dreams?”
“I’m in this restaurant, and the waiter brings me my entree. It was a salad. It was Lloyd’s head on a plate of spinach with his penis sticking out of his ear. And I said, ‘I didn’t order this.’ And the waiter said, ‘Oh you must try it, it’s a delicacy. But don’t eat the penis, it’s just garnish.'”
“Lloyd, what do you think about the dream?”
“I think she should stop telling it at dinner parties to all our friends.”
But my favorite Christmas movie is far and away The Ref, because The Ref manages to be a very funny Christmas comedy without needing a super-ridiculous dose of silliness or lunacy beyond the everyday mundane madness of human life.
The plot is simple: Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey are married, and they hate each other. But they don’t just hate each other. That would be simplistic. They each hate what they’ve become – a suburbanite couple stuck in Fuckall, Smugachusetts, essentially living off his mother’s largesse – and they’re both depressed as all hell. And there’s nobody else to blame it on except themselves and each other, so naturally, as many couples do in these situations, they’ve opted for both. They’re miserable and planning a divorce.
This is when Denis Leary shows up. At this point in his career, Leary was already starting to transition away from his well-known “asshole” standup persona, most likely because it obviously bored the shit out of him. He goes on a couple of Learyesque rants through the picture because it’s expected, but he’s not playing Denis Leary – he’s inhabiting his character, a tired aging burglar who hates his life nearly as much as Spacey and Davis hate theirs.
“From now on, the only person who gets to yell is me. Why? Because I have a gun. People with guns get to do whatever they want. Married people without guns – for instance, you – do not get to yell. Why? NO GUNS! No guns, no yelling. See? Simple little equation.”
And so, a hostage situation – starting with the married couple, and extending to their son, home from military academy for the holidays – gradually becomes both an extended drier-than-brut-champagne farce as Leary pretends to be a couples counsellor at Davis and Spacey’s family Christmas celebration, and the trigger event for a series of long-overdue bouts of honesty. Ted Demme (who never made another movie as good as this one, although Beautiful Girls came close) builds up tension slowly until Davis and Spacey finally just blow both their stacks and explode at one another in a way you know they never have, and the genius of their respective performances is that you really get that these are two people who really love one another despite everything, and who’ve completely lost how to tell the other that.
But just summing it up like that makes the movie sound boring. And it’s not boring. It’s fucking hilarious. There is an evil dog and a drunk Santa and a useless sidekick and inept small-town deputies. There are more killer performances in this movie than many movies have cast members – not just Davis and Spacey and Leary (every one excellent), but also one of the great Glynis Johns’ last (and most memorable) roles, plus ever-reliables like Christine Baranski and J.K. Simmons. And, as a special bonus, you get to see a great pair of underappreciated character actors – Robert Ridgely, the king of smarm, and Raymond Barry, normally stuck in “military advisor” gigs – use their chops in what’s arguably the best scene of the entire movie.
“That’s not the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is either you’re good, or you’re punished and you burn in hell.”
Someone, I forget who, once said that family are the only people who can tear you down and build you up at the same time. This movie’s all about that. Which is why it’s a classic.
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I remember catching this randomly on Comedy Central one day, and watching it because I really liked Leary’s standup at the time. Considering the usual quality of the movies Comedy Central airs, I was pleasantly surprised.
It’s no Die Hard, though.
This is definitely one of my five favorites for Christmastime. Along with Die Hard, Scrooged, Gremlins, and Nightmare Before Christmas.
I need to get a copy of this again.
Hey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5bc8zFUiQE
Also, thanks to your blog, I recently watched (500) days of summer. So, you know, THANK YOU.
About the other stuff… well, I guess I’m more a ghostbuster kind of guy when it comes to the christmas spirit.
And a fleeting moment of B.D. Wong, if only to set up one of my favorite jokes in the middle of the film.
Entirely underrated little flick — a film that could go wrong in entirely so many areas that, at least for me, refuses to, in large part because of an exceptional cast bringing its A-game and sustaining the film where it should falter.
Hives? HIVES at Miracle on 34th Street? The original? Look, my Christmas spirit is really only low-to-moderate under normal conditions, but when that little Dutch girl goes up to Santa, and she’s been told that he won’t understand her, but then he says hello in Dutch and her face lights up…?
Damn you guys, I think it is dusty in here. Don’t you feel the dust? Like, in your eyes? Damn.
That main lawyer dude is a total skeeze though. He ends up doing good things, but for all the most terrible reasons.
Coming soon from Hollywood: a remake starring one of the guys from The Hangover and that blond lady who wasn’t Tina Fey from SNL. With the Dennis Leary role given to Jim Carrey.
/headthump
I got news for you, lady. Your husband ain’t dead. He’s hiding.
PaulW, if you repeat that to ANYONE in Hollywood, I will cause you great spiritual harm, SOMEHOW!
Yup, definitely a great movie…
One of my favorites. I drive people crazy telling them about it.
Re: Ted Demme, I still think his best movie is “Who’s the Man,” with Ed Lover and the lesser Dr. Dre, plus Dennis Leary as a cop Sergeant. Lover’s rant about how he hates that motherfucker Jethro Clampett is “the bomb.” Did I say that right?
Ah, I love this movie. One of my favorite little moments is when Leary finds out his new getaway vehicle is a boat, and can only rub his eyes and hysterically laugh.
That, and, “Lady, I’ve met loan sharks with more compassion than you.”
“I got news for ya, lady. Your husband ain’t dead; he’s HIDIN’!”
While I enjoy Scrooged (though I wonder if things like the Solid Gold Dancers and Mary Lou Retton won’t eventually reduce it to a period piece) I’ve always thought the Christmas Future isn’t dark enough. Murray discovers he’s going to die (gasp!); Scrooge died so alone and unmourned people ripped off his bedsheets and threw him in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
“What’s that smell?”
This is a good movie.
But if you don’t like It’s a Wonderful Life, then it’s probable that something inside of you is dead and black and flinty.
While I enjoy Scrooged (though I wonder if things like the Solid Gold Dancers and Mary Lou Retton won’t eventually reduce it to a period piece) I’ve always thought the Christmas Future isn’t dark enough.
Um, his social worker idealist girlfriend turning into basically a self-absorbed rich snoot plus his secretary’s son being in an asylum was not dark enough?
Frankly, I thought that was pretty dark, because it didn’t only show the main character’s demise, but it also showed that his negative influence spread beyond himself.
I’m with you on a lot of these, but I can’t share the hate for “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I love the message of the film, because it feels true and heartfelt; the things that spread beyond us aren’t big, dramatic acts, they’re tiny little moments of hope and joy that we share with others. And Jimmy Stewart is frankly awesome. 🙂
No, for me the “get it off me, get it off me!” holiday movie is “A Christmas Story”, a treacly, rose-colored nostalgia for a time that never existed. I’ve never actually been smothered to death by cotton candy, but I have to imagine that this is what it would feel like. (And the bonus casual racism at the end is like icing on the hate cake! “Ha, ha, ha! Look! The Chinese people talk funny!” Fucksake.)
If you mention christmas carol and rowan aktinson in the same text you must mention rowans version of a christmas carol, hilarious.
Also, I am just reminded of the George C Scott as Scrooge version of A Christmas Carol, which is still a favorite rendition of mine.
as the first person intimated, Die Hard is (at least one of) the greatest christmas movie(s) ever.
in other news, Denis Leary and Kevin Spacy? I must see this film
“Slipper socks! Medium!”
Scrooge died so alone and unmourned people ripped off his bedsheets and threw him in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
Well, unmarked except for the marker with “EBENEZER SCROOGE” on it.
Also, I am just reminded of the George C Scott as Scrooge version of A Christmas Carol, which is still a favorite rendition of mine.
Indeed. Scott is a grouch, but in a restrained, gloomy way. Which lines up better with the story that Young Scrooge Went Wrong Somewhere.
But if you don’t like It’s a Wonderful Life, then it’s probable that something inside of you is dead and black and flinty.
Someday, someone should write an internet post exploring the hypothesis that George really does die, and is experiencing an afterlife that validates all his soulcrushing life decisions. Because that would be awesome.
mds: Someday, someone should write an internet post exploring the hypothesis that George really does die, and is experiencing an afterlife that validates all his soulcrushing life decisions. Because that would be awesome.
Here you go!
John Rogers: “Gotta say, once you realize George Bailey dies in the middle, it’s a totally different movie.”
(I finally watched “The Ref” last night.)