The holiday is a Chicago kind of event
It is Black Friday in America. For those of us avoiding the mall like it’s our racist uncle, there’s one true salve: Christmas movies.
Christmas gets DEDICATED CHANNELS of movies devoted to every facet of the holiday season. There’s the recovering girl accountant tames love among horses and horsemen. There’s recovering girl architect finds the only thing she can truly build is happiness with her long-left-behind hometown sweetheart. And there’s the recovering girl royalty finds love among immensely wealthy southern California villas while overturning a millennium-old monarchy through deft use of Oprah interviews. All in time for the elementary school pageant or choir to serenade the town center gazebo.
The conga line of Christmas movies emphasizes how few films there are about Thanksgiving. Peripherally, there’s “Addams Family Values” because of the amazingly bloody Wednesday Addams retelling of the first Thanksgiving. But that was a summer camp event. There’s also “The Ice Storm,” but that’s just a swinger party over a long weekend that happens to fall late in November. Interestingly also with Christina Ricci.
The only true Thanksgiving movie is “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” That’s the list. And that’s enough.
Odd Couple on wheels
Now thirty-five years years old, the John Candy/Steve Martin anti-buddy movie stands up amazingly well as a comedy. Martin is the exhausted corporate cog Neal Page, trying to get back to his family for Thanksgiving. Candy’s Del Griffith is the world’s most famous shower curtain ring salesman. It’s a role so good-natured that it’s a little hard to watch knowing that Candy would only be with us for a few years more.
The movie is essentially “The Odd Couple” on wheels. Tightly wound Neal’s frantic rush to the airport comes only in time to see his flight delayed. That sets off a cascade of misbegotten ideas and missed connections putting him ever behind the time to actually celebrate with his family. He becomes increasingly frantic in the mugging silver topped rage that only Steve Martin can portray. When the movie’s few F-Bombs drop, it’s completely in context and understandable.
