You can have your Miracles on 34th Street and Wonderful Lives. My favorite Christmas movies are where you forget that they’re actually focused around Christmas. And I’m not talking about Die Hard. Enjoy classics like:
Just Friends
My new favorite holiday movie. You know why Ryan Reynolds is the hottest man on the planet next to Brian McNally? No, it’s not his Green Lantern costume, it’s because he’s frickin’ hilarious. Sure you could cast this movie off as “Ryan Reynolds in a fat suit,” but you would only be doing yourself a great, great disservice.
Ryan Reynolds plays a former dweeb who comes back to his hometown over the holidays and hilarity ensues. He’s rarely been funnier, but for added treats in your stocking, enjoy Anna Faris playing a crazy whacked-out Britney Spears type, Chris Klein as an evil Lothario, and about a bizillion bitch-slap fights between Reynolds and the guy who plays his little brother. Reynolds even gets attacked by a kids’ hockey team (and he’s Canadian!). This movie probably holds the record for girly-man squeals from grown men (or almost grown men) and for some reason it never fails to crack me up (roll clip). I know this movie is on cable about every day, so there’s no reason to miss it, but try to TiVo it and save for the holidays.
Shop Around the Corner
Coming up third on the male hotness scale: amorous Jimmy Stewart. Just hear me out. When Jimmy Stewart starts standing closer to you and staring at your mouth, girl, there is no escape. Sorry to reference Wonderful Life again, but that scene where he and Donna Reed share a telephone receiver is what I’m talking about. He even starts smelling her hair!
Shop around the Corner features Stewart with his close friend and favorite costar, Margaret Sullivan, who unfortunately later went nuts and became Dennis Hopper’s mother-in-law. I also like it because Stewart is such a stringbean and Sullivan is about my height, and if you think that’s unusual you just have to look at me and my 6’4” husband (never dated anyone under 6 foot for some reason).
Anyway, charmingly set in Budapest where curiously only one of the employees has any sort of Hungarian accent, Shop around the Corner is about two anonymous pen-pals in love in letters but who hate each other in real life. Stewart figures it out first and finally makes his play on Christmas Eve, and as he turns off the shop lights, leaving only the Christmas lights, it’s about the most romantic thing in the world. Clueless Sullivan is happy that he has a mysterious girlfriend and asks, “Oh, is it serious?” “Yes, very,” murmurs Stewart as he’s looking at her lips again and I just want to fall over:
Diner
Diner is the last time I snuck into a theater and stayed there to watch a movie three times over. I was 16, and I love love loved everything about it. The football trivia quiz for the fiancée. The diner who eats the whole left side of the menu. The other guy who walks around quoting Sweet Smell of Success. But mostly I love the frenetic dialogue, most of it completely random, like in the famous sandwich fight sequence:
I especially love these diner scenes, which were actually part improv, part script. I want to hang out in a diner all night with these guys, blowing smoke rings and eating French fries with gravy. It’s the only time Steve Guttenberg was ever good. Mickey Rourke looked mildly clean. And you can pinpoint the beginnings of Kevin Bacon greatness: I love how he cracks up during the fight over the sandwich.
There’s so much awesome packed in here that it’s easy to forget that the movie actually takes place between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, which gives drunk Kevin Bacon a chance to play Jesus in a nativity scene. Funnier than it sounds, I assure you.
ETA: Because Shop Around the Corner is so great, you may be tempted to check out the AOL remake with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, You’ve Got Mail. Please do not, I beg of you. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake.