Memorable moments from holiday season classics
Most people have a favourite, but all of the holiday season classic movies have at least one iconic scene. There’s the Christmas tree that doesn’t fit. The air rifle that might put out your eye. The elfish diet that contains the four main candy food group
HOME ALONE
(1990) Kids of all ages continue to enjoy this comedic adolescent revenge movie seen through the eyes of adorable Macaulay Culkin. Parental dysfunction aside, the memorable moments are many. There’s the “keep the change, you filthy animal” bit. And there’s the iconic aftermath of the aftershave routine with Culkin’s hands-to-face posing. However, there’s also this ….
Most entertaining moment: The cartoonish showdown at the end with the “Wet Bandits” is a booby-trapped delight, giving Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote a slapstick run for their money.
NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION
(1989) It’s another multiple sketch fest. Not condoning the electrocution of the cat, but the sequence does live up to National Lampoon’s “that’s not funny, that’s sick” reputation. The police raid on the Griswold house to the tune of Gene Autry’s Here Comes Santa Claus is worthy, as well. So is the house lights reveal. Most entertaining moment: The Griswold family Christmas tree vignette is Chevy Chase at his deadpan best. In a series of quick cuts, Chase’s Father Griswold locates the massive tree in a field, and then we see the bent monstrosity dwarfing the family living room, to great comic impact.
A CHRISTMAS STORY
(1983) The Chinese restaurant memory is as hilarious as it is awkward when the Chinese waiters try to master Christmas carols before the owner brings out a cooked duck with the head still attached. But there’s more. Most entertaining moment: Ralphie’s request to Santa for a Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred-shot range model air rifle. The department store Santa is deranged-looking, his two-elves manically impatient. It’s all a satiric masterpiece.
SCROOGE
(1951) The 1951 black-and-white Scrooge is by far the most effective film version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol story, thanks mostly to Alistair Sim as Scrooge. Avoid all other incarnations, including the colourized version of this 1951 classic. Most entertaining moment: Scrooge’s initial reawakening from misanthrope to philanthropist, running around saying “label, label, label,” is a delicious delight, and a suitable reward for enduring the previous doom.
ELF
(2003) Let us count the second-best episodic Buddy the elf ways to make us laugh, Will Ferrell-style: There’s the testing of the Jackin-the-box toys, the revolving door thing, Buddy’s Santa scream scene and Buddy’s tricky up-the-escalator experience. Most entertaining moment: It’s Buddy making a very sweet spaghetti. “We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.”
BAD SANTA
(2003) Bad language, bad behaviour and an all-around bad-to-the-bone attitude makes Billy Bob Thornton’s Willie truly the baddest of all Santas. Most entertaining moment: The opening sequence shows Thornton as a fully garbed Santa at O’Hara’s Pub, half-drunk, having a smoke, lamenting his life like it’s a rude Yuletide joke. It’s comedy counter programming of the anti-jolly kind.
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET
(1947) The original 1947 movie features the talented Edmund Gwenn as a department store Santa who claims he is the real deal. Most entertaining moment: At a hearing before the New York Supreme Court, Santa dazzles the legal minds with his wishfulfillment logic in an endearing and enticing kind of way.
BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY
(2001) It’s difficult to resist recalling the English gentlemen fist fight sequence between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. When they tangle, they even plow through a storefront window just like good old cowboys. Most entertaining moment: Firth as Mark Darcy in his reindeer sweater attending a Christmas party with a hungover Bridget (Renée Zellweger) trying to navigate through unfriendly territory in a very funny and relatable been-there-done-that way.
LOVE ACTUALLY
(2003) Since the film is made up of bits and pieces from a wide array of actors, many fans have many favourites. Those include Hugh Grant as the dancing British prime minister and Grant as the PM singing a Christmas tune at the request of precocious children. Most entertaining moment: Department store clerk Rowan Atkinson gift-wraps a present for the increasingly frustrated, in-a-hurry Alan Rickman. Seconds become hilarious minutes. “This is the final flourish” says an oblivious Atkinson.
ABOUT A BOY
(2002) Another Hugh Grant movie, and it’s true the theme is hardly Christmas. But wait for this moment. Most entertaining moment: The Yuletide gathering that makes for an appropriately satisfying holiday conclusion.