5 favorite non-Christmas movies set at Christmastime
As promised, I’m rounding up my week-long list of Christmas favorites on the day after Christmas – and it’s a perfectly appropriate in this case.
Here’s my list of five favorite films that are set at Christmastime but aren’t really about Christmas. They are movies that incorporate the holiday prominently into the plot, but that aren’t really about the traditional Christmasy themes. (Although I’m sure some of you might argue that point with me in some cases.)
They are all movies that you can get away with watching all year long without people thinking you’ve cracked like a rotten egg. That makes them perfect for post-holiday blahs viewing, that nebulous time when you really don’t feel like watching “A Christmas Carol” or “White Christmas” again, but you’re not quite ready to let go of the holidays.
1. “Lethal Weapon” (1987): I don’t think I’ll ever forget that scene early in the movie when Riggs (Mel Gibson) is trying to work his way up to committing suicide while the Bugs Bunny Christmas special plays on the TV. Chilling. This is one of the best buddy-cop movies ever day.
2. “Die Hard”: “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.” You gotta love John McClane’s (Bruce Willis) New York cop attitude. Another great buddy-cop flick.
3. “Home Alone” (1990): Sure, Christmas is crucial to the setup, and it does have some Christmas-ish themes about family and forgiveness. But the real joy of this movie is watching little Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) use paint cans and blowtorches to bring a pair of bumbling burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) to their bruised and trembling knees. And it’s not the movie’s fault that Macaulay Culkin became a ubiquitous screw-up with approximately one million siblings.
4. “Bridget Jones’ Diary” (2001): Christmas really just helps mark the time of Bridget’s (Renee Zellweger) hilarious and highly relatable year of self-improvement, in which she documents in her diary her efforts to stop smoking, drink less and find the perfect man. (Hint: Colin Firth is awfully sexy when he’s not in an atrocious reindeer jumper.)
5. “Serendipity”(2001): Another sweet romantic comedy, in which John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale play two people who meet cute while Christmas shopping in New York and are brought together many years later through, well, you know.
-BAM
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I tried to watch that Bugs Bunny Christmas the other day, but I’ve seen Lethal Weapon so many times that it was just totally weird for me.