Thanksgiving is a time when families come together to celebrate the harvest and blessings of the past year. It’s also when we gorge ourselves with delicious food such as turkey (mmm turkey), stuffing (mmm…well depends on the stuffing), green beans (meh), cranberry sauce (eww), dinner rolls, pumpkin pie, and my personal favorites, mashed potatoes and veggie pizza!
Christmas movies are usually sweet and wholesome, and they take place around Christmas time. These can be found on the Hallmark Channel. Usually they’re along the lines of a stressed out, big city living businessman or woman who end up getting stuck in a small town around Christmastime. A local man or woman then shows them how to slow down and smell the roses, they fall in love and live happily ever after.
Needless to say, Christmas movies defined fairly well. Thanksgiving movies on the other hand are a little trickier as there’s no specific genre that pertains to them, there aren’t many movies that take place on Thanksgiving, and there’s even less that put you in the Thanksgiving mood.
What makes a Thanksgiving movie a Thanksgiving movie is subjective, when I made the initial list in 2018, I based the majority of my choices on nostalgia, the overall vibe of the movie, and hours upon hours of research. Over the past five years this list has gone through plenty of changes and this year is no different. What follows is a compilation of what we here at Just Original Entertainment have deemed the best in terms of turkey day viewing.
It’s Indiana Jones meets a bunch of kids pretty much. It’s cartoony but it’s also a classic. Mikey, along with his brother Brand, friends Andy, Stef, Mouth, Data, and Chunk go searching for One Eyed Willy’s treasure (One Eyed Willy…haha) with a map they found in their attic. With a synapsis like that how could you possibly go wrong?
What does it have to do with Thanksgiving? Aside from the fact that it’s played quite often around the holiday, nothing. This one has made it on every incarnation of the list, its position has fluctuated but I wouldn’t count on it maintaining a place on the list next year.
Here’s the obligatory “Mike Lackey Pick” of the list. Many won’t be familiar with this one as it’s a bit of a cult classic. It’s based on the Song/Album of the same name by Arlo Guthrie. A lot of the song and movie is based on the doings and goings on during a Thanksgiving in the 1960’s. I could write up a summary about this movie but take a listen to the song below as it’s basically a summarized version of the movie.
Life, like holidays, doesn’t always go perfectly as Pieces of April accurately depicts. April has, as another reviewer put it, a Pippi Long-stocking meets Punk Rock kinda look going on which for some reason reminds me of my sister Amy when she was a teenager. She’s got an estranged family, she’s not usually a cook, and her oven doesn’t work… It’s not as funny as you’d think but it’s also not a total downer either.
This felt like a Hallmark movie for dudes…which works out because I’m a dude. I really like the plot with our hero, Hodges, who left his hometown after high school and never looked back. His best friend from high school, Badger..er..I mean Mitchell (Breaking Bad kids, check it out), fakes his death in order to lure Hodges back to town so they can finish a football game (The Turkey Bowl) that was snowed out 15 years prior. It could’ve been a little better but it was good enough to make the list.
Think Ocean’s Eleven with the comedy cranked up to eleven…honestly there was no pun intended but we should all enjoy it anyways…read that again. What does this have to do with Thanksgiving you might ask, well the heist takes place on Thanksgiving during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. There are quite a few other movies on this list that have far less to do with turkey day than this one so if you don’t like it, make your own awesome Top Ten Thanksgiving Movie List…jerk.
A comedic tale, co-produced by John Hughes, about a man trying to impress his new girlfriend and bond with her son during a cross country road trip to get him home for Thanksgiving. Dutch, played by Ed O’Neil of Married with Children fame, is a working-class, good guy and Doyle, played by a young Ethan Embry, is a 12-year-old, prep school snob.
Dutch has the idea that the trip will give him the chance to become friends with his soon to be stepson, but things don’t go according to plan and hilarity ensues as the two embark on a pilgrimage from Georgia to Chicago.
Time travel + turkeys = Thanksgiving movie list. If it’s got to do with time travel chances are I’m gonna like it or at the very least give it a watch. This Scott Moiser produced holiday animated film has a surprising amount of heart. It took two viewings for it to make the list but that’s only because I wasn’t paying attention to it the first time. Look for the strangely motivational speech Jenny (the lady turkey) gives after she becomes the Chief of the flock.
A couple years ago I was reintroduced to this gem starring Pauly Shore, the last time I had seen it prior was over 25 years ago and man, had I been missing out! Shore plays Crotch…no, Crap…damn it, that’s not it either, Cramp…Shore plays a character by the name of Crawl (a nickname because in his freshman year that’s how he always made it home).
He majored in Karate, woodworking, CPR, and is thinking about switching to European Studies. He meets Sally…Jessie…Raphael…Rebecca (she’s got charisma, it’s a special quality of leadership that captures the popular imagination and inspires allegiance and devotion…she’s also 100% U.S.D.A Teriyaaaahhhhhki) at college and she brings him home for Thanksgiving because he has nowhere else to go.
In order to get out of being proposed to by her high school boyfriend, Travis, she has Crawl pretend they’re already engaged which doesn’t sit well with Rebecca’s family and hilarity ensues as only a Pauly Shore movie can provide. Grab a bowl of popcorn and your Steven Tyler pj’s for this one and enjoy.
Fun Fact, I used to go by the name Carrey when I went to college parties, not because I had to be carried home but because I’m a huge Jim Carrey fan!
Another John Hughes movie, quite similar to Dutch but with a slightly different dynamic. This movie is centered around the struggles of Neal Page trying to make it home in time for Thanksgiving and an awful lot of obstacles get in the way of him doing so including Del Griffith continuously making things worse. The story is simple, yet is so great, and the laughs don’t stop coming.
You can’t go wrong with the comedy provided by Steve Martin and the late, great John Candy as his bumbling sidekick. Their chemistry shines through and it’s not hard to believe that it’s both guys favorite movie they’ve done. The heartwarming ending is good enough to make even the most bitter individuals shed a couple tears and put a smile on their face.
In 1975 Sylvester Stallone barricaded himself in his studio apartment and had himself a writing marathon. Three days later when he emerged, he had written the entire first draft of the movie that would come to be known as Rocky. Rocky was based on a real-life boxing match between Chuck Wepner and Heavyweight Champion, Muhammad Ali where a relatively unknown Wepner shocked the world by going fifteen rounds with the champ.
Rocky is the story of a down-on-his-luck, debt collector named Rocky Balboa who is going nowhere fast when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime, a fight against the Heavyweight Champion of the World, Apollo Creed. Rocky is forced to dig deep and find the strength within himself to “go the distance” and prove to the world that he’s more than just a bum from the streets of Philadelphia.
Something about Rocky just screams Thanksgiving movie, maybe it’s the inspiring, underdog story, maybe it’s the boxing, and maybe it’s the message that anything is possible. There is a Thanksgiving scene where a turkey goes flying and Adrian & Rocky go ice skating. One thing’s for sure, after I’m done stuffing myself with an awesome Thanksgiving meal, I’ll be screaming, “YO ADRIAN, I DID IT!”
I hope you liked the list and found some good holiday entertainment that you can enjoy. Happy Thanksgiving from Just Original Entertainment.
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