In November and December, I usually end up watching several Christmas movies, and I usually come to the same conclusion: I don’t like Christmas movies, and they are the most soullessly rushed out kind of movie. So far this holiday season, I have watched three Christmas movies, and I think they have done a good job at being a representation of my feelings towards the genre.
The first Christmas movie I watched this year was the 2024 film released on Hulu titled Nutcrackers, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Ben Stiller. I was interested in watching this movie because I thought it was really weird that it, being a Christmas comedy by the director of Pineapple Express, was the opening film of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, and I knew it was featuring Linda Cardellini, an actor who I am very fond of because of her performances in Freaks and Geeks and the live-action Scooby-Doo movies. Unfortunately, Cardellini is barely in this movie and is given very little substance to work with. She didn’t even have a chance to give a good performance, which was disappointing. Overall, Nutcrackers was unfunny, obnoxious, and incredibly predictable. From the first couple of scenes, you immediately know beat for beat how the rest of the movie is going to go, and Green had absolutely no intentions of subverting even a single expectation. Yeah, I hated Nutcrackers.
Nutcrackers is my least favorite type of Christmas movie. It falls into the trap that many Christmas movies tend to, as it just really feels like so many movies I have seen before. Christmas movies are often made fun of for being so formulaic, such as almost every Hallmark Christmas movie following the formula of like a big-time doctor or something going back to her small hometown after many years and falling in love with a guy that causes her to live in that small town forever. I just have no interest in watching bland, basic, forgettable movies. I love bad movies when they are memorable, weird, and interesting. I hate bad movies when they are generic, forgettable, and boring.
The second Christmas movie I watched this season was the 1992 TV Christmas rom-com Christmas in Connecticut, a remake of the 1945 movie of the same name. Well, they call it a remake, but it honestly has very little to do with the original film, and it’s very silly that they just slapped the name on this random TV movie. The most remarkable thing about 1992’s Christmas in Connecticut is that it was directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in his only directing credit to date. My favorite thing about this film might be that it was very confusingly released in April. While this movie may be technically worse than Nutcrackers, I like it so much more as it wasn’t forgettable or boring. This film is so interesting, weird, captivating, and ironically hysterical. It is just so funny to watch a movie where none of the actors, besides Tony Curtis who I think is genuinely giving a pretty great comedic performance, cared at all. Kris Kristofferson plays the love interest in the movie, and the incredibly low amount of effort he put into this performance is so hilarious to witness. I also really ironically enjoyed the lack of chemistry the two leads had, especially in their “romantic” montage together where they playfully cut down a tree in the snow while wearing no added layers.
Christmas in Connecticut is a good kind of bad Christmas movie. It is so bizarre and baffling in such a funny and fascinating way. The choices made by the filmmakers are so confusing and strange that it makes the movie a fun watch. It’s a terrible, terrible movie, but I would watch this any day over a soulless copy of a copy like Nutcrackers.
2015’s Love the Coopers was the third Christmas movie I watched this season, which I watched after hearing that a scene of it was filmed at the grocery store I work at, Norwin Shop n’ Save. I expected a generic and uninspired movie, which is just what I expect now when watching a Christmas movie because that is just how the majority of them are, but Love the Coopers was pretty good. It followed the different members of one family, the Coopers, and their singular misadventures on Christmas Eve. It is one of those rare Christmas movies where it feels like the people making it actually cared enough to put passion and effort into it. The directing by Jessie Nelson, while I may not love all the visual choices made, is unique and creative. I never thought I would describe the direction of a Christmas movie as maximalist, but that word describes the visual presentation of this movie well, which I have to appreciate after watching the very visually bland and uninspired movies that are Nutcrackers and Christmas in Connecticut. The acting was great as well. Olivia Wilde gave a really charming, likable performance. Anthony Mackie and Alan Arkin were also standouts.
Love the Coopers has a cheesy, on-the-nose screenplay that still manages to be heartwarming and emotionally effective. It ends in a pretty generic “feel good” way, but it still was able to make me feel good. The writing felt very earnest and genuine, and while it wasn’t funny, the sense of humor wasn’t obnoxious or shoved in your face. It was a more mellow kind of comedy for the most part, which I appreciated.
So after watching these three Christmas movies, I have come to the conclusion that there are three types of Christmas movies. The insufferably bad ones, the enjoyably bad ones, and the good ones, which is obviously something that could just be said about movies in general. The difference is there seems to be way more of the insufferably bad kind of Christmas movies than the other two types and way less of the good kind of Christmas movies, as most Christmas movies are just pumped out to make a quick buck, with not much passion going into it. Every streaming service these days feels the need to release at least two or three Christmas movies every holiday season, so not much love and care goes into many of the releases and the studios hold these films to lower standards than most movies. But I think the lackluster quality of most Christmas movies makes watching a truly good Christmas movie so much more special.
