Thanksgiving Movies: A Cornucopia of Craziness
Watching these films will make anyone’s annual family feast seem
normal by comparison.
Everyone has a crazy uncle who visits at Thanksgiving and eats a little too much canned-cranberry sauce, drinks a lot too much wine, and falls into a tryptophan-induced coma on the couch during the football game. (That tryptophan thing is a myth, by the way.) Actually, that's not too crazy, especially when you see what the people in these films have to put up with. Let’s give thanks ... that this is not us. (Or is it?)
Pieces of April (2003)
Katie Holmes did her best to shake her post-Dawson's Creek image by playing a drug-abusing bad girl but the cherry tattoo on her neck looked like a rub-on and she came off as if the hardest drug she had ever done was baby aspirin. Still, there’s a good story here, that also mixes in another Thanksgiving movie staple: the journey. She invites her family to her horrible apartment in New York City for her first attempt at cooking Thanksgiving dinner and problems (lots of them) ensue. But turkey will be eaten as long as her mother, Joy, doesn’t die of cancer first and her boyfriend isn’t murdered by neighborhood hoodlums.
Holiday quote:
Joy Burns: I keep waiting for a good time to tell you, but there's really no good time. I need everyone to listen. ... I don't know how to say this. ... We need to discuss how each of you, Oh God ...
Jim Burns: It's okay, sweetie.
Joy Burns: How each of you is going to handle ... discarding food without letting our hostess know. [ And mom laughs like it’s the funniest thing ever. Gobble! Gobble! ]
Home for the Holidays (1995)
The holidays are tough for a lot of people, but try this on: You’re a single mom (Holly Hunter) and you just got fired and your daughter refuses to visit family in another city for Thanksgiving because she wants to stay behind and have sex with her boyfriend — and you say okay. There’s more: your gay brother (Robert Downey Jr.) has a hot new friend and you take him back home with you. Pass the cranberry sauce, please!
Holiday quote:
Leo: Well, that was absurd, let's eat dead bird!
Adele: I'm giving thanks that we don't have to go through this for another year. Except we do, because those bastards went and put Christmas right in the middle, just to punish us.
Claudia: Nobody means what they say on Thanksgiving, Mom. You know that. That's what the day's supposed to be all about, right? Torture.
Nobody's Fool (1994)
Sully is a grumpy, irresponsible old man with a keen eye for a younger (married) woman, and Paul Newman plays the role so well he was nominated for an Oscar. But things get more complicated when his estranged son comes to visit for Thanksgiving. Can they work it out? Will he find true love? Will the turkey be dry?
Holiday quote:
Sully: Poor guy just had a bypass. Maybe he's trying to cram everything he can do into six months. When he realizes he's going to live until he's seventy, he'll slow down.
Toby: If I had my way, he wouldn't live to Thanksgiving.
The Ice Storm (1997)
The ’70s was perhaps the weirdest decade for Thanksgiving — and a lot of other things. Maybe it was the bell bottoms that made people go crazy. Or maybe it was the key parties. It was also weird to be a kid growing up in all that corduroy and puffy hair. Add an ice storm (and Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver and Ang Lee and Christina Ricci) and you have a heck of a movie. How’s this for grace at Thanksgiving dinner?
Holiday quote:
Wendy Hood: Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.
Ben Hood: Jesus! Enough, alright? Paul ... roll?
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
This movie isn’t really about Thanksgiving but it begins and ends on the holiday, so that’s something, right? That’s two crazy dinners for the price of one, plus you had side dishes like adultery, existential crises and drug addiction — but the funny versions of those things. This is, after all, Woody Allen, and the cast is amazing.
Holiday quote:
Mickey: You know, I was talking to your father before, and I was telling him that it's ironic I, I — used to always have Thanksgiving with Hannah, and I never thought that I could love anybody else. And here it is years later and I'm married to you and completely in love with you. The heart is a very, very resilient little muscle, it really is, I — make a great story, I think, guy marries one sister, doesn't work out, many years later he winds up married to the other sister, it's. You know, to — how you gonna top that? Hmm.
Holly: Mickey.
Mickey: Mmm, what?
Holly: I'm pregnant.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
In the 1960s, people still fought in the open during Thanksgiving, but kept certain other things private. Especially cowboys (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal).
Holiday quote:
Alma Beers Del Mar [ during Thanksgiving ]: Don't try and fool me no more, Ennis; I know what it means! Jack Twist. Jack Nasty! You didn't go up there to fish!
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