I've never seen Love Actually from beginning to end. Over the years I've picked up bits and pieces of it on television. It is cluttered with a whole bunch of disjointed scenes with a who's who of British actors that makes it hard to believe all these scenes come from the same movie. Look at that cast! There's even Bill Nighy doing a Christmas version of The Troggs' Love Is All Around. Unfortunately, it is insufferable to watch for more than five minutes at a time, yet the studio is rolling out a 20th year anniversary edition for theaters this holiday season.
We get hung up on these "old movies" much the way It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart became venerated over time. They all try to be heartwarming and clever, giving their saccharine-coated stories a little twist like a curled lemon peel in a Christmas martini to give the unnecessary syrup a bit of zing. It works because people are less discerning this time of year. They want to accentuate the positive in an effort to eliminate the accumulated negative from the year. We want a movie we can take the whole family too, regardless of their age.
Hence, Home Alone, which has become the staple of the Christmas season. So much so that here in Lithuania they are actually showing a version with a symphony orchestra led by Ben Palmer. He loves nothing more than setting blockbuster movies to classic scores to the thrill of audiences the world over. I never liked this movie, or its sequels, but had to endure it with the kids over the many holidays so that I know it virtually by heart.
One year, Daina and I tried to upgrade the holiday viewing by showing Fanny and Alexander. I had bought the Criterion edition which had the full 5-hour movie. We spread it out over two nights but the kids didn't show much interest beyond the opening Christmas scene. We spiced things up succeeding Christmases. They liked Metropolitan, The Coca-Cola Kid and Smoke, as we tried to be more contemporary. I love Auggie Wren's Christmas Story.
For me, the best Christmas movies are the ones that are set during this time of year but don't try to make a big deal out of it. One of Daina's and my favorites is the classic Russian film, The Irony of Fate. You couldn't really celebrate Christmas during the Soviet era, so you celebrated the New Year. You just gave it a Christmas twist and no movie does this better than this one. The kids never got into it, but we would watch it for ourselves.
I would also share some of the Christmas television shows I watched as a kid, finding a box set of Classic Christmas Favorites that included Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, The Year Without a Santa Claus and The Little Drummer Boy. Daina would share her favorites including the memorable Penguini, a sad tale of an Antarctic penguin losing its egg.
Still, we kept returning to what the kids regarded as the Christmas classics. You realize you can't create memories for the kids. They have to make their own. For our son it was Die Hard. This was the perfect Christmas movie for him. Plenty of spills and thrills. He was never into the Christmas movies. For our youngest daughter it was The Nightmare Before Christmas. She wore out the special edition box by opening and closing it so many times to watch this movie over and over again. For our oldest daughter it was hard to say. I don't think she had a particular favorite but I remember she kept Metropolitan for herself. That's a pretty good list if I say so myself.
It's sad not having the kids to share Christmas with this year. I would sit through any movie, even Love Actually, to be with them. As it is, we bought tickets to Wonka to try to put us in the holiday spirit. I imagine it will join the ranks of Christmas movies we love to hate, but I will just remember the time we took our youngest daughter to her first Christmas movie in a theater. She couldn't have been more than two when we saw The Grinch, watching it on DVD ever after.
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