I don't know about you guys, but my family always had this tradition of watching Christmas movies together when I was a kid. I've carries it onto adulthood, and my wife and son both enjoy our annual movie marathon on Christmas Eve. A thread on anothe board got me to thinking that perhaps a thread here would be a good idea. So what would you say is the most overrated, most underrated, best, and worst Christmas movies?
Overrated:
Christmas Vacation.
Actually the whole "___ Vacation" series beyond the first one just pisses me off. I mean besides the fact that they couldn't keep any continuity with the Griswold kids, none of them came close to living up to the original Vacation movie. I will admit that Christmas Vacation is the 2nd best of those movies, but that's like comparing Andre the Giant with Peter Dinklage in terms of height. It's not that I don't like Christmas Vacation. It's an ok movie, but it just isn't worth all of the praise it receives.
Underrated:
Gremlins.
No the movie itself is not underrated. It's as ubiquitous with the 1980s as the Rubik's Cube or California Raisins, but when it comes to Christmas movies that aren't really Christmas movies, Die Hard takes all of the attention. Meanwhile we have Gremlins, which toed the line between Halloween and Christmas a full 9 years before Tim Burton regurgitated his stop-motion musical shit show. I mean who didn't cheer when those little bastards used that stair chair thing to fling that crotchety old lady out of the second story window of her house? It sure beat watching Hans Gruber falling out of a building.
Best:
White Christmas
Yeah this one might not be for the younger crowd. Hell, it's probably not even all that popular among those my own age. But it was my mom's favorite Christmas movie, and my sisters and I watched it a lot during the two weeks off from school. The music is fun, and the story of WW2 vets bringing a down-on-his-luck General a Christmas surprise always gets me right in the feels. Just ignore the eye-bleeding amounts of red in the last scene. It was the 50s, and they didn't know any better.
Worst:
Star Wars Holiday Special
I know a lot of people might think of Elf here, but I have never seen it. Will Ferrell just isn't that funny, so I never bothered putting myself through that torture. Instead I'm naming the one Star Wars thing so bad that it wasn't shown in theaters, didn't go direct to VHS, and instead found itself among the ilk of Hallmark Christmas movies in that it's a "Made for TV" movie. It's baffling how bad this thing is. I mean they had the original cast along with Bea Arthur, Art Carney, and Jefferson Starship, but star power was not enough to save this abomination. It's not even one of those "so bad, it's good" things. Besides the 10 minutes straight of wookies growling and grunting at each other with no subtitles or English speaking character giving us context clues or even a helpful protocol droid fluent in over 6 million forms of communication to tell us what the hell they are saying, we also have Bea Arthur's character singing about her bar that the Empire shut down because of ... reasons?, and a ridiculous cooking show where we're taught to "stir whip, stir whip, whip whip stir." This thing is so bad that George Lucas wanted to erase it from our memories. He is quoted as saying "If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every bootlegged copy of that program and smash it.” Let's be clear here. The man who gave us Jar Jar Binks even thinks it's bad.
Overrated:
Christmas Vacation.
Actually the whole "___ Vacation" series beyond the first one just pisses me off. I mean besides the fact that they couldn't keep any continuity with the Griswold kids, none of them came close to living up to the original Vacation movie. I will admit that Christmas Vacation is the 2nd best of those movies, but that's like comparing Andre the Giant with Peter Dinklage in terms of height. It's not that I don't like Christmas Vacation. It's an ok movie, but it just isn't worth all of the praise it receives.
Underrated:
Gremlins.
No the movie itself is not underrated. It's as ubiquitous with the 1980s as the Rubik's Cube or California Raisins, but when it comes to Christmas movies that aren't really Christmas movies, Die Hard takes all of the attention. Meanwhile we have Gremlins, which toed the line between Halloween and Christmas a full 9 years before Tim Burton regurgitated his stop-motion musical shit show. I mean who didn't cheer when those little bastards used that stair chair thing to fling that crotchety old lady out of the second story window of her house? It sure beat watching Hans Gruber falling out of a building.
Best:
White Christmas
Yeah this one might not be for the younger crowd. Hell, it's probably not even all that popular among those my own age. But it was my mom's favorite Christmas movie, and my sisters and I watched it a lot during the two weeks off from school. The music is fun, and the story of WW2 vets bringing a down-on-his-luck General a Christmas surprise always gets me right in the feels. Just ignore the eye-bleeding amounts of red in the last scene. It was the 50s, and they didn't know any better.
Worst:
Star Wars Holiday Special
I know a lot of people might think of Elf here, but I have never seen it. Will Ferrell just isn't that funny, so I never bothered putting myself through that torture. Instead I'm naming the one Star Wars thing so bad that it wasn't shown in theaters, didn't go direct to VHS, and instead found itself among the ilk of Hallmark Christmas movies in that it's a "Made for TV" movie. It's baffling how bad this thing is. I mean they had the original cast along with Bea Arthur, Art Carney, and Jefferson Starship, but star power was not enough to save this abomination. It's not even one of those "so bad, it's good" things. Besides the 10 minutes straight of wookies growling and grunting at each other with no subtitles or English speaking character giving us context clues or even a helpful protocol droid fluent in over 6 million forms of communication to tell us what the hell they are saying, we also have Bea Arthur's character singing about her bar that the Empire shut down because of ... reasons?, and a ridiculous cooking show where we're taught to "stir whip, stir whip, whip whip stir." This thing is so bad that George Lucas wanted to erase it from our memories. He is quoted as saying "If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every bootlegged copy of that program and smash it.” Let's be clear here. The man who gave us Jar Jar Binks even thinks it's bad.
