I'm a complete sucker for Christmas movies. I love the saccharine sentimentality. The splash of Christmas magic. How everything wraps up in a nice (pun intended) bow.
Because of Covid and social distancing, my friends have a chat where we watch movies together every Tuesday and Thursday night. These movies are sometimes determined by an actor we want to do a deep dive on (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Channing Tatum) or a seasonal block of films. To determine what movies we watched for the Thanksgiving to New Years season, we built a bracket of all our favorite Christmas movies and had them go head to head.
It pained me to see some eliminated, but we only have 7 weeks to watch movies. I'm going to end up watching most of the losers anyway, but it still hurt.
So, without further adieu, here is my ranking of the best Christmas movies. (That I've seen and remember seeing)
30. The Princess Switch
I had never heard of this movie, but my friends were bored in the Discord and wanting to kick Christmas off... so we put on this movie. It's a wild ride. Some baker (played by Vanessa Hudgens) wins a contest to fight to be best baker in some non-descript Nordic city where there's a princess that looks just like her. (Vanessa Hudgens plays the princess too)
Yeah... you're right, you already know where this is going. Both lead characters are sort of sick of their lives and do the princess switch, find love, and ultimately stay in touch for the sequel.
This has been done a million other ways and better.
I have heard the sequel to this has Vanessa Hudgens playing three characters! There's a sick part of my soul that sort of wants to see the "we changed lives" plot done with a third person.
29. The Year Without A Santa Claus
I was never a fan of the claymation Christmas films. And I never saw this one as a kid. So it had a large hill to climb.
The plot is about Santa getting depression and almost cancelling Christmas because he can't get out of bed.
Mrs. Claus tries to take up the reigns (I briefly thought this was about women's liberation) and then gives in and realizes that she can't deliver Christmas as well as a man and instead has to get Santa out of his depression.
Ultimately we find out that Santa has bi-polar disorder and in a manic episode, decides Christmas is on. So for this one year, we dodge a bomb.
28. Ernest Saves Christmas
I don't have a lot of say about Ernest Saves Christmas, except it's pretty much the plot of "The Santa Clause" except this Santa doesn't have to get murdered to pass the magic to the next person.
It's your typical Ernest movie. Ernest has to become Santa. Verne is obviously involved, there's some slapstick humor with a cast of weirdos that ultimately have a heart of gold.
27. Prancer
"I've got a great idea. You know that reindeer with the cool red nose?"
"Yeah, Rudolph."
"Know how he sells a billion in toys and books every year?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Well, there's eight other reindeer my man. We pick one, this Pancer guy, and we make a movie about him."
"Money idea. Just straight money."
26. Nightmare Before Christmas
Sorry Hot Topic kids, as much as I want to love the Nightmare Before Christmas, it's super boring to me.
About every three years, I say, "Maybe I should check that out again." And every single time I come to the same conclusion, I'm bored.
25. The Santa Clause
Might seem weird to have The Santa Clause above Ernest since I said Ernest was the original version of
this plot, but the Santa Clause pulls it off better.
They murder Santa in like the second scene of this movie. JUST DEAD. SANTA! Like how did they get away with that? Shouldn't someone be arrested?
And then Tim Allen gets to do comedy in a fat suit for 90 minutes and they squeeze like 3-4 sequels out of this. Not a bad run.
24. Elf
This film has a following like adult Disney people. I get it, it's a good movie, heartwarming and funny. But you're 35 and dressing like Buddy the Elf, quoting all of the lines, while pounding milk and cookies like it's oxygen.
People love Elf. They love quoting Elf. They love dressing as characters in Elf.
I like Elf. I saw it years after it had been out, so the cultural phenomenon had slowed by the time I got to it.
23. Office Christmas Party
This is really a film about the important of having an office Christmas Party. Nothing bonds a group of co-workers like getting rip-roaring drunk, making tons of mistakes, all on the company dime.
It's a fight between corporate America, wanting to squeeze a little more cash out of the business by cancelling the extravagant Christmas party, and the human part of the workforce wanting to have a night to chill out together and reflect on the back breaking labor of the year.
22. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
This one falls further and further as I get older. I think it's because every teacher that wanted a day off would pop this VHS tape into the TV and we'd have an hour of Rudolph.
Again, claymation Christmas tales feature crippling depression, a wanna be dentist elf and an outcast reindeer, that hang out with a bunch of broken ass toys.
Rudolph, Selena, and Amadeus are the three movies I never want to see again because school ruined them.
So Rudolph with your nose so bright, please just get out of my sight!
21. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
The thing that I never understood about the Grinch Who Stole Christmas is why the Grinch is automatically the bad guy. I want some background. Why is he the way he is?
I think he has a valid excuse for hating Christmas. The Whos are assholes. Those bastards are constantly singing about what a jerk they think the Grinch is. This is bullying!
I too would steal Christmas from those rat faced idiots if they spent every day singing about how they think I suck.
20. Batman Returns
Recently rewatched this and is better than I remember it. There's so many plotlines going on that I didn't realize as a kid.
For instance, Penguin is just mad that a bunch of unregulated corporations have polluted all of Gotham's sewers. I'm kinda on his side.
Batman's response? "Yeah, that's going to be a face kicking."
I'm including this in my Christmas movie list because it all takes place during Christmas week. That meets the criteria in my mind.
19. Christmas Chronicles
This one needs some time to breath. I think it's going to climb the list. I enjoyed it immensely when it came out in 2018.
You got Kurt Russel (interested already) playing Santa Claus (very interested) who accidentally kidnaps children (super interested), and steals a car to try to finish Christmas (love it) all really just to teach the curmudgeon kidnapped children about the spirit of Christmas.
18. A Very Murray Christmas
Did any of you know that I was a fan of Bill Murray?
This is just a low stakes Christmas film. Bill is trying to throw a Christmas bash with all his best friends at a swanky New York hotel when like 9 feet of snow drop and no one can make it to his bash.
So, he wanders the hotel making friends with anyone there and they throw their own Christmas bash. There's songs, a feast, friendship, and love. It's everything you could want in a Christmas film.
17. Muppet Christmas Carol
Muppet Christmas Carol is the second best telling of the Scrooge story. (Stayed tuned for my number one)
It's Kermit, you know? With his little nephew as Tiny Tim. Kermit has never betrayed me. I trust Kermit with my life.
You know what I don't trust though? How f-ing scary this movie is. I forgot that it's kinda messed up, especially the ghost of Christmas future.
I played it for my niece last weekend. Luckily she seemed completely unphased by it cause as it started unfolding I thought that I may need to go ahead and put money into her future therapy fund.
16. National Lampoons Christmas Vacation
"I'm sorry, this is our family's first kidnapping." I'm realizing I have a theme of liking Christmas movies that involve kidnappings.
I wish Chevy Chase wasn't known as being such a jerk, cause his dead pan delivery plays so well with Randy Quaid's Cousin Eddie character.
This film brought us so many Christmas comedy tropes: Cutting down a tree from the side of the highway that is too large, having too many Christmas lights that you cause a blackout, and the Christmas bonus gone wrong. (Remember Christmas bonuses? Yeah, me either. Never got them.)
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