9 Classic Holidays Movies to Express Your Dysfunctional Family

If the feverish pace of the holiday season has you feeling like you’re stuck in a thunderdome with your family as opposed to soaking up quality time with your family, you might just be nearing the end of your rope by now. Maybe I’m wrong and you’re in one of those Leave It To Beaver families, all cuddled up together on the couch, in front of a fire, taking turns reading aloud from Dickens. Maybe Aunt Shirley’s making her famous peppermint hot chocolate and your younger brother Ricky is upstairs changing into a Santa costume to delight all the children. Even Patrick, your regal golden retriever is in on the fun, wearing a set of reindeer antlers on his head and a big red satiny bow around his neck, prancing around majestically like he’s one of those fancy Instagram dogs. If this sounds like your family, this post is not for you.

If alternatively, your Aunt Peg has had too much sherry and is confessing her one true love was her college roommate Denise and that your Uncle Henry never “touches her as a woman should be touched anymore;” or if your mom brought her new boyfriend to dinner and you finally place his familiar face as the little boy you used to babysit in the early 90s; or if your family is nowhere in sight and you’re really bonding with the whiskey bottle you’ve nicknamed dad while you anxiously await your Seamless delivery, then you’ve come to the right place.

To all the damaged products of dysfunctional families, this post is for you. You don’t know what caroling around the neighborhood as a family feels like, but you sure as heck know the solace a dark closet can provide when your older brother and dad are going at it again over dropping out of college. The weirdos, the freaks, the goths, the misunderstood, gather ye round, for it’s time to indulge in some holiday films made for us, the broken ones.

Leave Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer to the normals and instead, enjoy these holiday movies starring your brethren, the dysfunctional family, described below as they should be, by jumping on the #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly train.

Home Alone
A young boy’s negligent parents were pressured by society and the Catholic Church to have more children than they can keep track of, and forget one of those children at home when leaving for a family vacation. The child left at home must protect the family’s honor and worldly possessions from burglars in this examination of the seedy underbelly of Chicago’s suburbs in the early 90s.

A Christmas Story
As the specter of nuclear war with the USSR looms, a young boy schemes to arm himself with a gun by any means necessary, including desperately trying to persuade an aging deity of western consumerism.

Elf
After being lied to his whole life, a middle aged man is exiled from his isolated village and the only family he has ever known. We follow the immigrant’s journey to New York as he faces severe hardships and fails to assimilate into American culture.

The Family Stone
Cultures collide as Republicans and Democrats clash over a Christmas holiday in this sobering commentary on the political divide in modern America.

 

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Promises of change and declarations of love prove to be lies when a family loses track of their child again, this time in pre-Giuliani New York City.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Though it is never discussed, over the course of two decades, a midwestern family’s children don’t age yet their appearances change drastically. One Christmas the patriarch of the family goes to unusual extremes to collect his holiday bonus, as he remains convinced money can buy happiness.

Christmas With The Kranks
Evil befalls a family that dares to turn its back on Christmas, thus proving Santa is more powerful than god himself. The Kranks are bullied, guilted and manipulated back into celebrating, because autonomy is outlawed, and they live in fear forever.

The Ref
A cat burglar is the real victim of a Connecticut couple’s crumbling marriage.

Four Christmases
Two spoiled city dwellers reckon with their pasts in this unflinching commentary on the divorce epidemic in America.

Have another favorite “complicated family” film to add? Let’s here it! Leave a Comment below, on Facebook, or catch us on Twitter!

All the Movies are Lying About Love

In the year of our lord two thousand fifteen, human adults got really excited about a new dating website for Disney enthusiasts. As someone who thinks it’s weird for grown ups to go to Disney theme parks without children, it’s safe to say I was very unsettled by the idea that such a dating market existed and needed to be catered to. I’m all for every pot having a lid, and fully support the old adage “as long as you’re not hurting anyone go for it,” but this feels different and is worthy of further discussion. Catering to the Disney-obsessed niche, I think, is indicative of a shift towards embracing the idea that chasing a fairy tale is now an acceptable and encouraged lifestyle.

The problem is of course, life isn’t a fairy tale. The love stories put together by Disney and the rest of Hollywood are all fun and games until people start holding their own love lives up to fairy tale or romantic comedy standards. The odds that you’re going to have some incredibly unique love story are very slim, and the fact is, you don’t need one to be happy. But the more a person focuses on getting a big Hollywood ending over focusing on the work that needs go into that relationship to make it work and last, the more people are going to end up in my office discussing their divorce options.

Are Sunday afternoon TBS movies ruining us along with climate change, the gun laws in this country and aspartame? Just maybe. Let’s explore some movies that are setting us up for romantic disappointment, and you be the judge.

While You Were Sleeping
Falling for a guy from afar, saving his life, pretending to be his wife while he’s comatose in the hospital and then falling for his brother does not, in real life, end in a happily ever after with the brother. In real life it ends in a psychiatric hospital after people find out you were lying about being married to a person you’ve never met. You can plead and try to explain while the lithium kicks in, but there’s not really a way out of this one.

Pretty Woman
This is not an accurate depiction of the sex industry, in case you didn’t realize. White knight saves prostitute with a heart of gold is not how this goes down in real life. In a dangerously unregulated industry full of exploitation and human trafficking, a bloated, bored father of three hires a woman who uses drugs to cope with the unimaginable abuse from her childhood and they never see each other again — that’s real life. Or this ends in Gilgo Beach. Either way – Not. Good.

10 Things I Hate About You
The dark and stormy bad boy will not orchestrate a large musical number to get your attention. In real life, the dark and stormy bad boy will continue to hide his dad issues behind a veil of ~edginess~ until he succumbs to alcoholism – just like his dad!

Titanic
Hey, YOU CAN BOTH FIT ON THE DOOR. In real life, you both fit on the floating door and Jack dumps you after you get saved because, what the hell you could both fit on there why did you act like it would be impossible? Selfish much?

Every Hallmark Movie Ever

• You will not fall in love with the dashingly handsome, newly widowed postal worker.
• Santa is not real, he will not bring you a wife for Christmas.
• You will not save the family bakery from foreclosure by winning a large cash prize in a pie competition and fall in love with the real estate agent caught in the middle.
• You will not fall in love with the guy who rear ended your car, who also, as it turns out, plays your daughter’s favorite TV show character.
• You will not have a triple wedding with your two sisters, thus throwing a wrench into your parents’ second honeymoon plans.
• Santa is not secretly a total hunk and he will not finally realize he is in love with you and kiss you as it starts to snow, on Christmas Eve.

Last Holiday
The odds of you being mistakenly diagnosed with a terminal illness are pretty slim, even in our crumbling medical system. So odds are you’re not going to go on one last big blowout vacation, snag your longtime crush and then find out you’re not dying. In real life, this ends in your unfortunate demise and your family being left with astronomical debt thanks to your last hurrah.

Bridget Jones’s Diary
The idea of being accepted “just as you are” is such a beautiful, if not delusional, sentiment. Yes you should accept people, warts and all, but there is also a limit. There is a limit to zaniness, excessive jealousy and hijinx and real life Mark Darcy would have gotten to that limit pretty early on.

Every Lifetime Movie Ever

• You will not rekindle the spark between you and your high school boyfriend when you lock eyes unexpectedly across a Christmas tree lot.
• You will not fall in love with a young surfing instructor on the 40th birthday weekend getaway your kids planned so you could “let loose for once.”
• You will not frantically plow through boyfriends because your dying mother told you the one will be your seventh boyfriend.
• You will not seal your love forever by murdering the one woman who threatens your relationship. I really, really hope you won’t.

Love Actually
The lie here is that this is allegedly a feel good movie that’s supposed to fill you with cheer and romantic hope. The plot lines are actually not too far from real life as they’re all tragic. Dead wife, cheating husband, severely ill relative getting in the way of having a social life — take your pick. Though in real life the videographer ends up in jail because he is a c-r-e-e-p.

Never Been Kissed
It is possible Josie and Mr Coulson end up together but not until after Josie goes to jail for forging a driver’s license and Mr Coulson maybe loses his job for having an inappropriate relationship with a student. While she was actually a grown up, I can’t imagine there’s no repercussions for him.

Any Movie Starring Kate Hudson or Sarah Jessica Parker
Playing weird games does not lead to healthy relationships, it leads to threadbare relationships built like houses of cards. In real life, if the house of cards actually gets a wedding, it gets a nasty divorce too.

To sum up, the meet cute is not king. The wedding is not the end. No means “no,” not “keep trying to impress a person until you wear them down into loving you.” Do not let movies and the first three Taylor Swift albums brainwash you into thinking the one is Prince or Princess Charming. And for goodness sake go out and see the real world for as long as you can because soon enough you’ll be forced to take your kids to the sanitized Disney version.

Respectfully,
James J. Sexton

Divorce and Stay Classy, New York

In the category of “things that should have happened a long time ago,” a new Anchorman-themed bar has opened in the Lower East Side. Lucky for me, it’s only forty-five minutes out of the way when I’m coming home from work, therefore I will be stopping in nightly.

To be fair, the bar is actually Will Ferrell-themed, not Anchorman-themed, and it offers, for example, cocktails named after lots of his movies, not justAnchorman. But let’s be really clear here: Anchorman was the best Will Ferrell movie. (I will accept no objections to this.) Ok, maybe Step Brothers was but that can, in large part, be attributed to the genius that IS John C. Riley.Anyway, the bar owners must have mulled this over for days before coming to the name the place Stay Classy New York.

And classy ’tis. 

The cocktail menu is basically the best thing I’ve ever seen, heard or read. As you muddle through your divorce proceedings, methinks you’ll find considerable solace at the end of the day by burying your troubles in a Smelly Pirate Hooker (it’s a cocktail, people—get your minds out of the gutter) and/or a Whale’s Vagina.

Now, while I can confidently assure you that I am not in any way being compensated by Stay Classy New York to promote them or their awesome cocktails, I will tell you this: the first Anchorman movie more or less made me the man I am today. I now routinely use lines like “Don’t act like you’re not impressed” while showing off the many leather-bound books in my office. You only think I’m kidding.

So how should you make the most of this new NYC resource as you begin a new chapter in your life? Some suggestions:

1. Invite people to Stay Classy as a part of your whole making new friends exercise. 
2. Come to Stay Classy when you just need a break from people asking uncomfortable questions. 
3. Meet a blind date here. Even if it goes horribly, you’ll have lots of Will Ferrell memorabilia to fill the awkward gaps in conversations.
4. Establish this as your new “local bar,” even if it’s not actually local. Make everyone meet you here. 
5. Come here to read all of the Open Letters (they will be increasingly good as you work your way through the cocktail menu).

Let me know if you happen to stop into Stay Classy New York, and feel free to offer up a review in comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter!