Happy Holidays to all our faithful readers!
Upon reviewing our past Christmas-themed blog posts, I realized that we have pondered Christmas movies (as in what constitutes one and what does not), but there are other holiday films that I want to discuss with you as they are on my mind…
So my latest thing is I am watching really old Christmas movies. A few years ago I came across an article called 38 Forgotten Christmas Movies You Should Watch Right Now. The list starts in 1934 and progresses to 2011. While I am wrapping, baking, writing cards, or doing some other such holiday-related fare, I have been working my way through the list. I have been focusing on the older films since many of them I have never even heard of before. One of the things that strikes me as interesting is they seem exclusively to be set during the holidays but not necessarily about the holidays. Nowadays I feel like more and more of them are about somebody saving Christmas.
Anyway, this year so far I have watched The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). The Shop is basically a better version of You’ve Got Mail. Yes, I said that. I prefer this original version because one of the pen pals finds out the other’s identity and doesn’t fess up for quite a while (longer than in the remake). It really makes you wonder if the bottom of the whole thing is going to fall out at the end. But of course you know it won’t because, well, it’s 1940. The Man Who Came to Dinner was also pretty good, despite some misogyny which never ages well. But I was able to get over that because it felt like the women in the film took the men to task for their behaviors, albeit in a 1940s sort of way.
In addition to the super old stuff, I have also decided to give a few brand-new Christmas movies a try. Last week, we watched Family Switch. This is basically Freaky Friday with a few extra twists. It was cute and we got a few laughs, but I don’t think it will make my annual re-watch list. Nonetheless, it made my daughter happy for us to watch it so extra candy canes for that! Speaking of which, we also viewed Eddie Murphy’s latest – Candy Cane Lane. This also was pretty fun: some cool CGI and a few creative subplots. Again, though, I do not need to watch it on repeat. I should mention that one thing we coincidentally *did* do which elevated the film was to watch Trading Places a few nights before. Two Eddie Murphy vehicles 40 years apart is an interesting exercise!
All right, I would love to write more, but I must get back to my wrapping!
Thanks for reading!
Eve
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