This is still the best Thanksgiving movie!
Holiday movies are a dime a dozen. But there are very few movies about Thanksgiving that really capture the essence of the holiday. The best to ever do it is a Jodie Foster movie from the 90s starring Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., and Dylan McDermott.
The 1995 film Home for the Holidays follows Claudia Larson (Hunter) as she goes home by herself for Thanksgiving. Her daughter Kitt (Claire Danes) wants to spend the holiday with her boyfriend and it leaves Claudia facing her family by herself. She has a close relationship with her brother, Tommy (Downey) and the chaos of a three sibling household is beautifully explored in the film.
Claudia and Tommy are close, their sister Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson) is stuck up in their eyes and all they do is make fun of each other. While that might not seem like an appealing family film to watch over the holiday season, I think that it is very accurate to how families function. Siblings are complicated and movies like this and The Family Stone (2005) understand that they fight with each other.
Yes, the holidays are meant to be a time to come together with your loved ones and celebrate but it also brings tension. Fighting with your family is normal and Home for the Holiday really nails the strain that all the siblings being in one place can cause. And yes, I do love that Robert Downey Jr. gets to have a lot of fun with Tommy and his relationship to Claudia.
It has all the makings of a perfect Thanksgiving film. There is football, turkey, and screaming matches. What else could we want?
We need more specific holiday films
Throughout the years, we’ve shifted to really three big holiday films. We have love stories around Valentine’s Day, scary movies for Halloween, and the slew of Christmas movies we see every year. And we need to kind of go back to every holiday having their own films. I miss celebrating with movies like this.
Thanksgiving has some great ones. Outside of Home for the Holidays, we also have Planes, Trains, & Automobiles. But turkey day pales in comparison to other celebratory days with your family. Is there a reason we stopped making movies like this in the modern age? Did we all decide we couldn’t stop the classics?
Jodie Foster gave us a perfect movie about wanting to be with family but also knowing how stressful that is and I really just love to revisit this movie every year. Cute Downey is just a plus!
Whatever the reason, I do wish we’d go back to a bunch of holiday movies throughout the years. Although I still think that Home for the Holidays is perfect, I do wish we could have a return of the holiday film. For now, we can go back and rewatch some of our favorites this season and if that means watching Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. being flirty siblings with each other, so be it.
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