So here it is early January. Your tree is still up and there are remnants of a great celebration all around you. It feels good. It is hard to let go. You’re not ready even though you look out the window and see neighbors who have kicked their tree to the curb and have brought in their inflatables.
What do you do? How can you extend the Christmas without looking like a freak?
Perhaps some stealth movie watching can help with that hankering. Here are five movies with unexpected Christmas that are sure to delight:
1. It Happened on Fifth Avenue
The late 40s brought a lot of Christmas classics and this isn’t one of them. But it is a classic and it is picking up steam in recent years as a favorite of many during the holiday season. Set in modern day New York City, the movie tells the story of the 2nd richest man in the world who abandons his New York mansion every Christmas. When he does an amiable, golden-hearted bum named McKeever moves in and quietly takes over the place. Mac invites an unemployed veteran, Jim, to move in after he was evicted from a building owned by…the 2nd richest man in the world. Jim just doesn’t know Mac is squatting in the mansion really owned by his former landlord.
What does this have to do with Christmas? A series of complicated hi-jinks transpires as Trudy, daughter of the real life millionaire, falls for Jim and concocts a scheme to win his heart. The police catch wind of Mac’s takeover of the place and on Christmas Eve crashes the party and ultimately reveals everyone’s ruse. Of course, by this time hearts have changed.
This is a delightful comedy that only came out on DVD in 2008, more than 20 years after it had disappeared from public view altogether. Turner Classic Movies brought it back to television in 2009, 2014 and again this past year of 2015.
It Happened on Fifth Avenue received one Academy Award nomination, for Best Original Story. It lost out to Miracle on 34th Street.
2. While You Were Sleeping
This romantic comedy celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2015 and is widely quoted by fans. Sandra Bullock plays the single and lonely Lucy who dreams of being swept off her feet by a man she sees every day at her job at a commuter train station in Chicago. A freak incident puts her crush on the tracks on Christmas Day and it is Lucy who saves him.
But he ends up hospitalized and in a coma with only Lucy left to explain what happened. The man’s family descends in all their glory at the hospital and through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings end up thinking that Lucy is not only the girlfriend but the fiancé of their son, Peter, the man Lucy saved on the tracks.
Hilarity ensues as Lucy gets close to Peter’s family and sparks begin to fly between her and Peter’s brother, Jack.
Everything takes place against a backdrop of Christmas including a delightful scene where Lucy is invited to the family home to celebrate Christmas with them. In those moments she sees all the elements of love missing from her life and her crisis becomes very real as Lucy and viewer alike really want there to be a way for Lucy and Jack to get together. But there’s a problem – it’s Peter, and he has amnesia. The result is a charming story filled with laughs and tears – and Christmas.
3. New in Town
This 2009 release stars Renee Zellweger as an uptight corporate executive exiled to a rural Minnesota community to save or close a food processing plant for the company she works for. She’s from Miami.
She’s a fish out of water from the start, trying to navigate the frozen and glazed streets of New Ulm, Minnesota in high heels. Nearly everything about the place is unappealing to her, even the fact that Harry Connick Jr. is the local union rep that she has to work with.
What makes this movie really work is the supporting cast with J.K. Simmons and Siobhan Fallon Hogan who have the Minnesota accents and eccentricities down to a hilarious science. Of course, Zellweger becomes emotionally attached and finds herself trying to save jobs for the town over making the dollars for the company.
Where’s the Christmas? It comes in the frigid winter of Minnesota singing Christmas carols with Harry Connick, Jr. What more could you want?
4. Pocketful of Miracles
Apple Annie is played by Bette Davis in this 1961 comedy directed by Frank Capra. How this is NOT considered a Christmas movie is just as big a mystery as to why Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life is.
Apple Annie is a gin-swilling street peddler who years before had a daughter from a previous marriage. The child was sent away to school in Europe and grew up thinking her mother was a rich socialite by the name of E. Worthington Manville. Now grown up, the daughter, played by Ann Margret, wants to come meet her mother and her high minded friends. Apple Annie turns to her low brow friends to pull off the ruse, including the help of the corrupt but golden hearted Dave the Dude, a mobster played by Glenn Ford.
Christmas is all over this movie and it has a constant presence in the film, even if the story isn’t ultimately about Christmas. Davis’ transformation from street mess to elegant lady-for-a-day is stunning, not only in the story but also on film.
It’s a Wonderful Life was Capra’s favorite film but this movie was one he called a “miserable film”. It was also Capra’s last movie and it has gained quite a cult following over the past 50 years as a must-see Christmas classic.
5. Trading Places
This 1983 comedy fore-shadowed the acting careers of both Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. A comedy by John Landis, Trading Places tells the story of a heartless experiment by two bored, rich investors who bet $1 on whether they could turn a bum, Eddie Murphy, into a successful executive while at the same time taking their capable manager, Dan Aykroyd, and turning him into a bum.
The comedy shines in this film as the characters played by Murphy and Aykroyd adjust to their new lots in life. From Eddie Murphy commenting that if he wanted bubbles in his bath before he had to fart in the bathtub to Aykroyd’s pathetic Santa Claus costume the movie is filled with moments of laughter – and Christmas. But there’s nothing overtly Christmas about this film – it’s just there, in the background, ever present to lend a quality to the story.
Not a Christmas movie? Ask Italians. For whatever reason this movie is a holiday staple in Italy and is played there every Christmas Eve. Go figure.
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