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Christmas isn’t all that funny unless you have a slightly dark sensibility. The shopping and gifting and well wishes and sentimentality are great and all—but where are the punchlines?
The funniest Christmas movies have often mined the inner and outer psychological warfare that surrounds holiday rituals. Gathering with relatives who make you quietly seethe with hatred? Christmas Vacation gets you. Facing the unique existential dread that only caroling seems capable of bringing out? Check out the off-the-wall deadpan indie black comedy of White Reindeer. Or if you really just want to lay waste to the idea that this is the season of giving, cue up Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa.
Which is to say that the funniest Christmas movies may not quite embody the spirit we’re told to believe the holiday must espouse. But the best comedy has always brought an aggressive counterpoint to unthinking cheer in a way that allows us to laugh rather than run away in horror. (Though there’s always room for Charlie Brown to make us believe again, albeit with a sly chuckle.) Santa getting shot out of his carriage by Harold and Kumar? Funny.
Make yourself a boozy hot toddy and sink into these notably funny Christmas- and holiday-themed movies. Then go back to being nice to the uncles, aunts, and cousins who creep you out in a way you can’t quite define.
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Christmas Vacation
The standout of the original National Lampoon’s Vacation trilogy, Christmas Vacation has become annual viewing in many households for good reason: It is very, very funny. From a frostbitten Juliette Lewis to a fried cat, the movie is willing to send up just about every holiday tradition with barely a glimmer of sentimentality—a burn-it-all-down approach that befits Chevy Chase’s comic style.
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White Reindeer
There’s a whole subgenre of indie Christmas movies, but few are as worthwhile as this small black-as-ink comedy about a woman who reckons with the untimely demise of her husband as the holidays arrive. If that sounds heavy, know that it’s studded with farcical curveballs following the widow’s deranged journey into the world of stripping and criminality.
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Tangerine
Before the Oscar-nominated The Florida Project, director Sean Baker helmed this alternately hilarious and devastating day-in-the-life story of two trans women clomping down the streets of LA on Christmas Eve looking for a cheating boyfriend/pimp and—above all else—something like acceptance. Its visual seamlessness is made all the more impressive when you find out it was shot on an iPhone.
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Scrooged
Bill Murray put the funniest twist on the generally sentimental Christmas Carol template with his version of Ebenezer, here an aloof TV executive who doesn’t seem to even care about himself, much less anyone else. He gets another chance, naturally, but even that is laced with the delightful deadpan of peak ‘80s Murray.
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Gremlins
Gremlins has its frightening moments, especially for the little ones, but it’s much funnier than scary. Sweet, docile mogwai turn from Christmas presents to cackling demons at the touch of water, which is when the real fun starts. Try not to snicker when one unruly creature gets the microwave treatment.
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Gremlins 2: The New Batch
If anything, Gremlins 2 is admirable for how it turns up the hijinks of the original to 11. A satire of corporate greed, it finds the suddenly empathetic monsters running amok quite literally over American capitalism in an office tower—and enjoying the C-suite spoils.
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The Night Before
This underrated Seth Rogen vehicle joins him with the equal star talents of Anthony Mackie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They all radiate genuine camaraderie as buds determined to make the most of their Christmas Eve revelry one last time, with a supremely weird Michael Shannon weed dealer in tow.
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Home Alone
There isn’t much left to say about something so tried and true so I’ll just say this: God bless Catherine O'Hara and that fake gangster movie clip. What’s stopping you from a rewatch, you filthy animals?
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Bad Santa
Billy Bob Thornton had a later-career resurgence with this grimly hilarious movie that asks: What’s it like to be a sleazebag mall Santa with no limits? Coming off of Ghost World, director Terry Zwigoff makes the most of his cast, including Tony Cox as one wild elf.
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A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
Fun fact: This bizarro Harold & Kumar entry was indeed theatrically shown in 3D, and at least when we first saw it, the entire effects budget seemed to have been spent to make you feel stoned out of your mind, including when Santa Claus is literally shot out of the sky. It worked.
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A Christmas Story
Whether or not you’ve already memorized its unforgettable moments—the weirdly porny leg lamp, the BB gun, the frozen tongue on a pole—it’s always a good time to unearth the surprising subversive qualities hiding in this “family film.”
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Elf
Elf is more or less an excuse for Will Ferrell to channel his man-child energy into a sweet Christmas movie. Which is no reason to complain, especially when the movie is this polished and he’s this on point.
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Metropolitan
Smarty-pants satirist of the highbrow and disaffected Whit Stillman made his name with his 1990 debut feature about a group of bratty Manhattan elite kids and the middle-class student who ambivalently falls into their clique. Christmas isn’t so much a plot point as a background to throw themes of class and generosity (or the lack of it) into stark, sardonic relief.
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Jingle All the Way
Jingle All the Way isn’t a good movie per se, but it has the pure campy jolts of pleasure of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s most ridiculous stuff. That he rides through it with such aplomb deserves its own award.
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A Charlie Brown Christmas
What made Peanuts so great was the way the sly humor always cut through the sentimentality, and that’s never more true than in the animated Christmas short. Charlie’s tiny bare tree is pathetic—as well as, like the movie, a small but potent gesture of humanity.
Trading Places
Okay, Christmas only barely surrounds the raucous maneuvering in the Eddie Murphy comedy, in which his street grifter switches class roles with Dan Aykroyd’s trader. But it deliciously upends ideas of holiday generosity with its satisfying revenge against the Man.
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Go
Yes, Katie Holmes starred in a wickedly chaotic 1999 comedy-thriller in which she gets it on with a shirtless Santa hat-wearing drug dealer played by Timothy Olyphant on Christmas Eve. That doesn’t even begin to describe the multi-story ecstasy-fueled hysteria. Dawson’s Creek? Who?
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The Star Wars Holiday Special
If you haven’t seen it—and Disney sure doesn’t want you to—the imitable crappiness of the Star Wars TV special is worth seeking out. At least, if you think simultaneously desecrating the legacy of Star Wars and Bea Arthur in one fell swoop is funny. Which, just trust us, it definitely is.
Mixed Nuts
Nora Ephron’s Steve Martin-starring Christmas time comedy about the selfish and mentally unstable staff of a Venice, Los Angeles, suicide help center as a killer stalks the area came and went with terrible reviews. Maybe because with its French source material it was just a touch too European and, uh, not-so-feel-good. Which is too bad because aside from the much-better-than-average laugh quotient, a cast including Rita Wilson, Liev Schrieber, Adam Sandler, and Garry Shandling should’ve sold itself. Correct this injustice.
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The Apartment
Billy Wilder’s classic stands as arguably one of if not the best romantic comedies ever made without the backdrop of the holidays. But its Christmas party screwball antics and genuinely beautiful New Year’s Eve confession of love may just make you feel like anything really is possible at the end of the year.
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Paul Schrodt Paul Schrodt is a freelance writer and editor who also contributes to Esquire, GQ, Money, The Wall Street Journal, and more.
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The Link Lonk
October 28, 2020 at 04:24AM
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20 Funny Christmas Movies - Best Funny Christmas Movies - menshealth.com
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