The Denver Daily News asked if I could write a quick column on the best holiday movies. What's missing? Any good unheralded gems?
It's a Wonderful Life
Sure it's a holiday cliché, but if you don't watch this, your wife will hound you until you do. If you don't have a wife it's probably because you haven't seen it. If you've seen it every year since you've been married, then spice it up with a drinking game; chug every time something bad happens to Jimmy Stewart. The first person to cry pays for the booze.
Beware: Don't stifle the cry. You'll only make louder chortling noises.
Who Will Like This: If you don't you're Satan.
Secret to Better Enjoyment: You'll be inspired to change your life. And then you'll go drink in front of a Bowl game.
Love Actually
I can't even remember how many love stories are in this movie. There's a Portuguese one, hot girl one, the Prime Minister one, the one where a guy cheats on his wife and the guy-whose-wife-has-died-whose-son-has-some-love-issues one. Oh, and there's the funny rock star who has great lines like, "So if you believe in Father Christmas, children, like your Uncle Billy does, buy my festering turd of a record."
Beware: So sugary it could sweeten sewage.
Who Will Like This: Women still hoping Ross and Rachael hook up.
Secret to Better Enjoyment: It's raunchy.
A Christmas Story
What can I say? If you haven't seen this then you have a lucrative future writing a book about how lame your childhood was. However it's not too late, starting Christmas Eve TBS airs a 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon.
Beware: You may not want your child getting the idea he or she needs a BB gun.
Who Will Like This: Your inner and outer children.
Secret to Better Enjoyment: Go to www.achristmasstoryhouse.com to buy your very own leg lamp.
When Harry Met Sally
Dragging a Christmas tree through the streets of New York is a whole lot easier with someone holding up the other end, and having a standing date for New Year's Eve should be mandatory, but sometimes even that isn't enough for high maintenance chicks. So queue up the holiday soundtrack by Harry Connick, Jr., and you've got the formula for how to make lovers of friends...during the holidays.
Beware: You'll have to sit with family watching a woman have a very real orgasm.
Who Will Like This: Most girls and anyone missing the 80's
Secret to Better Enjoyment: The old couples' stories in between scenes.
American Beauty
It's nice to watch a dysfunctional family other than your own. I think it should be a holiday tradition. American Beauty is especially cool because every time I see it I forget all the people who are in it like Allison Janney (The West Wing), Harold from Harold and Kumar, and the Quantum Leap guy.
Beware: Lead-laden toys might be depressing enough.
Who Will Like This: Anyone seeing family over the holiday.
Secret to Better Enjoyment: Litter can lead to an Academy Award.
Other Holiday winners: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Miracle on 34th Street and Home Alone.
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