2025, animals, Family, Fantasy, holidays, Movies

Our Holiday Movie

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All autumn I was dreading “the Christmas movie”. On Christmas morning, YA and I have almost always opened stockings and then gone to the movies. We did skip a couple of years due to COVID and one year we just couldn’t find anything at theatres that we liked so we streamed a movie and watched it from the comfort of the sofa.

I knew from YA comments that she wanted to see Wicked. And you all know from my rant last summer that I was not that interested. The thought of seeing a 2½ hour movie (that is just Part I) of a musical that I’m not crazy about just didn’t seem like a fun way to spend a morning, much less a holiday morning. So when I saw a poster at Southdale for Red One, I thought we might find a compromise.

Two weeks before Christmas we went to see Wicked at the Riverview. I always like the Riverview, even if I’m not that wild about what’s showing and that’s exactly how it turned out. We had a nice enough time, I didn’t have to close my eyes over anything gory. Since I’ve gone on and on about Wicked already, I won’t get into it here – suffice it to say it was a good decision not to see this as our Christmas Day movie.

Red One turned out to be at the end of it’s run before Christmas Day (how does this make sense that a Christmas movie stops showing a couple of days before Christmas?) so we decided to see our holiday movie on Solstice this year.

The movie lived up to my expectations. Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans are the main stars. Johnson can’t act his way out of a paper bag but his charm is that he knows this and doesn’t try. A bit refreshing actually. I only know Chris Evans as Captain America, but he gave a creditable performance as the guy who gets transformed by Christmas spirit.

It’s almost impossible to do spoilers for a movie like this… if you don’t know where it’s going, then you’ve never seen a Christmas movie. Here are a few things I thought were particularly fun:

  • • The reindeer are all female.
    • Johnson is the commander of E.L.F., the groups that “guards” Santa. He explains this to Evans at one point saying that as far as Evans is concerned, it stands for Extremely Large and Formidable.
    • Toy stores are the portals to the North Pole transit system, which reaches all over the world.
    • Santa is a smallish, muscular guy who works out a lot and loves cookies, except for macaroons.
  • And, of course, there is a massive polar bear named Garcia on the E.L.F. team.

By the time we got home from the theatre, YA had discovered that Red One is already out on Prime Video. I’ve watched it twice more since then!

Do you have a favorite holiday movie?

39 thoughts on “Our Holiday Movie”

  1. Die Hard.
    Well, not really. I don’t have a favorite holiday movie but I enjoy being on the minority contraraian side who call it a Christmas action film.

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  4. “Favorite” is an impossible concept for me, the idea of a hierarchy where one thing stands above all others. It all depends on context and my mood of the moment.

    There are Christmas movies we’ve liked enough to want to see more than once. For some reason, this year we chose rather to watch quotidian Hallmark-esque instead, movies where the protagonist goes for the first time to meet the family of their significant other. Comedy and drama ensues.

    Christmas movies we’ve enjoyed enough to warrant watching again include “Elf”, of course, and also “A Boy Named Christmas”, which includes Maggie Smith in the cast and is based on a story by Matt Haig. “The Man Who Saved Christmas” is a semi-fictional account of Dickens’ writing of A Christmas Carol with Christopher Plummer as a wonderful Scrooge. A young adult romantic comedy, “Dash and Lily”, pleases me because much of it is set in the Strand bookstore in NYC. By far the most “out there” but nevertheless entertaining Christmas movie I know is a Finnish film, “Rare Exports”. It’s beyond description.

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  5. I have missed most of the Christmas movie icons, but the ones I tend to like the comedies – at least remember Bill Murray in Scrooged… I have never seen the Muppets one, and may even see if the library has it..

    I do remember The Holiday was kind of fun – Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swapping homes for the holidays… Miracle at 34th Street (the original).

    Maybe Charlie Brown Christmas will win out, or what Chris said – White Christmas.

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      1. I didn’t originally cotton to Home Alone. Slapstick is not one of my favorite things. But for some reason over the years, it’s grown on me. I ended up watching it twice this year.

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        1. carrol Kane did a nice movie this year. I can’t remember the name of it, but I’m sure if you Google it. She probably only made the one and it was delightful.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I do not have any favorite Christmas movie. Only recently have we taken to going to movies on Christmas Day, which to my surprise, I really enjoy. This year we saw Wicked which I enjoyed a great deal. I especially enjoyed the word play, my favorite word being “moodify.”

    OT: yesterday I had a same day surgery, which caused me to learn more than I ever wanted to know about the saline shortage caused by Hurricane Milton hitting a factory in North Carolina in September. The Buffalo, MN hospital is one of the few hospitals with enough saline at the moment. I hope whatever manufacturing tsar is in charge of such things designates 2 factories for producing this product, rather than the one which was entirely destroyed by the hurricane. Meanwhile, everything went well and problem is solved. I don’t want to write about it on a public blog, but my absences recently have been due to Dr.’s appointments. My sister and brother-in-law are here providing extra care and support, so I also have the latest updates on sister’s Book 5, “See Jane RIde” (set at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally). She has revised it while here and the draft goes to the editor this afternoon. Renee, her books happen in your part of the world, just south of you in South Dakota. You might enjoy it. First book is “See Jane Run.”

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  7. We were never in the habit of going to a movie on Christmas Day, except for a stretch when we would go to the latest installment of the Harry Potter series. Thing 1 and Thing 2 were kids at the height of the books’ and movies’ popularity (we had to buy two copies of each new book so they didn’t have to decide who got to read it first).

    We have two categories for favorite movies to watch at home on Christmas. If just Husband and I are watching, we enjoy Love, Actually. Some of our favorite actors and some classic scenes, like the Nativity pageant with kids dressed as sea creatures. If the whole family is watching, we’ll go with Muppet Christmas Carol or Hook, which isn’t really a Christmas movie (it takes place during the holiday season), but it’s one movie that everyone in the family is happy to watch over and over.

    I will have to try to find the Maggie Smith/Matt Haig movie. I read The Midnight Library and really liked it. –JB

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    2. when i saw it there was also an airplane so it fooled me for a while because one flew by and i was waoting for the second one to fly by too but it stayed put. you know like planets do

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  9. No favorite movies for me. It’s just not a thing for me. I did go to A Complete Unknown on New Year’s Day. That’s actually the first movie I’ve gone to in years. I liked it.

    I’ve enjoyed It’s a Wonderful Life and The Polar Express at home on tv.

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    2. I adore Klaus… I do mist up a little at the end.

      Nobody has mentioned Christmas Chronicles with Kurt Russell. I love this one as well.

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  11. I thought I replied earlier, but I must’ve forgotten to hit the go button and then it disappears

    I got to go see wicked the day after Thanksgiving and loved it thought it was fantastic and then got to go see no direction home the day after Christmas and double loved it. It was really fantastic as far as Christmas movies. I was delighted to see that it’s a wonderful life was added to the 24 hour continuous run agenda this year along with a Christmas story. I watched both of those a couple times and then my daughters turned on home alone for the young grandchildren who loved it. I’m not a big home alone fan, but it was a delightful Christmas I do love miracle on 34th St. white Christmas Scrooged I like the old black and white Christmas Carol from 1940. I can’t remember the name of the guy who plays Scrooged but he’s delightful and I’m sure there were one or two others that I mentioned but that’s probably enough. Isn’t it funny that there aren’t really many seasonal movies about other things other than Christmas?

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    1. There are two really great old classical Christmas Carols. One was with Reginald Owen that was in the late 30s and then Alistair Sims, but I don’t think he was until the 50s. But they are both fabulous.

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  12. I usually just watch It’s a Wonderful Life. There are so many versions of A Christmas Carol that I don’t really remember which were the best ones, but I like to see that, or hear an audio reading of it.

    The animated Rudolph and Charlie Brown specials are classics.

    I enjoy a lot of other Christmas movies without being particulrly loyal to any of them

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  13. Robin decided this year that Eurovision, with Will Farrell and Rachel McAdams, was her favorite Christmas movie, even though there’s nothing specifically Christmas about it except its setting in Iceland. I don’t disagree.

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  14. i was surprised it took so long for ‘A Christmas Story’ to come up.

    We really liked ‘Red One’. Daughter has been streaming it a lot.
    I’ve never seen Die Hard. Or Home Alone. I just watched ‘national Lampoon Christmas Vacation’ this week. I wasn’t impressed.

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