One of the best things to do this time of year is to watch your favorite holiday movies. Nothing can make us smile more than watching Santa come to town or people in awkward holiday-related situations. With that in mind, here are my top 11 movies to watch during the 2011 holiday season. Whether you’ve seen them before or not, they’re sure to provide some great holiday entertainment.
11. “The Family Man” (2000) Nicholas Cage wakes up a family man with a wife and children instead of the cut-throat investment banker he was when he went to bed. His Ferrari became a Mini-Van, and no one knows him at the investment firm to which he devoted 13 years of his life. But a new way to spend the Christmas holiday may finally get him to stop looking for his old life.
10. “The Holiday” (2006) Sometimes the holidays just make us want to run away to another country. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet trade houses in L.A. and London to get away from their own lives for a while.
9. “Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights” (2002) Sandler made this animated comedy based on his epic song “The Chanukah Song” where he lets us know who is Jewish and who is not in Hollywood. It’s worth watching the movie just to hear the song, and, if you’ve never heard it, hop on Youtube because you’re really missing out.
8. “Money Train” (1995) When Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Lopez (back when she was still Jenny from the block) and Wesley Snipes get together as New York City subway cops during the holidays, there’s bound to be some interesting action.
7. “The Santa Claus” (1994)If you kill Santa, you’d better be prepared to take over his job. Tim Allen, quite reluctantly, does just that and slowly becomes Santa in every sense of the word — quite a surprise to his family.
6. “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989) If you’ve ever had a family member obsessed with making a holiday special or a neighbor who puts up enough Christmas lights to light up the entire neighborhood, then you have to watch Chevy Chase nearly burn down the house, while dealing with family and work issues, in this Christmas classic.
5. “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001) It’s easy to remember Bridget when we think of chick flicks involving an awkward girl looking for love, but it doesn’t usually come to mind when we think of holiday movies. But it takes place over most of the Christmas and New Year’s holiday. In fact, the first time she sees her maybe soul mate, he is wearing a very dorky Christmas sweater.
4. “Home Alone” (1990) How can you not love the moment when Macaulay Culkin slaps his face with both hands and screams upon realizing he has been left home alone for the Christmas holiday while his family flies off to France. Life is great at first — pizza for dinner, all the TV he can watch — until the bumbling burglars come to rob his house.
3. “About a Boy” (2002) Hugh Grant (Will) makes anything fun which is quite a job in this film centered around a sad, lonely outcast of a boy whose mother tries to kill herself around the holidays. But that’s what you get yourself involved in when you pretend to have a child in order to join a single parent group full of dumped, forlorn women. What Will doesn’t know is that he is the loneliest one of all, and it’s past time for him to grow up. The beyond awkward holiday scenes with the kid and his bizarre family including the almost-deceased mom are worth watching to feel better about your own crazy family holidays. But the movie is awesome to watch anytime.
2. “Bad Santa” (2003) There’s nothing more attention-grabbing than a bad Santa, and Billy Bob Thornton is bad in every way possible in this holiday movie. He drinks excessively — even while working, curses blatantly, sleeps with strange women, steals from children and hustles a lonely child and his grandmother. And while I wouldn’t want to meet him in real life, he is hilarious to watch with his little-person sidekick as they take over malls and plot crimes.
1. “Elf” (2003) Hands down the best holiday movie ever made has Will Ferrell playing a six foot human who believes he’s an elf named Buddy even though he looks nothing like the rest of the elves at the North Pole where he grew up. When Buddy finds out he was adopted and his real dad lives in NYC, he sets off to look for him, and shows up in the city, dressed in his elf attire, ready to start a relationship with the father who never knew he existed and wishes he never found out. Ferrell’s best work is a must-see holiday movie, especially if you like maple syrup on everything — even spaghetti.
Whatever you watch, enjoy your holidays and your time off from studying. We’ll see you in January with more exciting arts and entertainment stories.
