Film Feast: Thanksgiving at the Movies

Planes, Trains and Automobiles includes a number of now iconic scenes (the “Those aren’t pillows!’ moment elicits laughs, no matter how many times one sees it, year after year).  The movie’s popularity has grown such that the film is now slated to be remade with Will Smith and Kevin Hart.

Before Planes, Trains and Automobiles, there weren’t many film celebrations of Thanksgiving, beyond 1952’s Plymouth Adventure, with Spencer Tracy, in a melodramatic re-telling of the Pilgrims’ voyage on The Mayflower.

Thanksgiving has actually been featured as part of many films’ stories.  Woody Allen’s Oscar winning Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) tells the story of the main characters and their dysfunctional lives over the course of two years.  The film uses Thanksgiving Day to bookend the story, in the opening and concluding scenes.

Also in 1986, Thanksgiving dinner featured prominently in the comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills.  Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler play a well to do couple in California’s elite neighborhood, who take in a homeless man, played by Nick Nolte.  One of the first meals that they share with him is at their lush Thanksgiving table.

That table, decked out with the Thanksgiving Turkey and all the trimmings has been featured in a variety of films, from 1942’s classic musical Holiday Inn, which features Bing Crosby crooning the Irving Berlin song “I’ve Got So Much to be Thankful For” to director Sam Raimi’s seminal super hero movie Spider-Man (2002). 

Some films have even skewered Thanksgiving, in a darkly humorous way, like 1993’s Addams Family Values, which contains a hysterical scene in which the Addams kids, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) go to camp and put on a play about the First Thanksgiving that’s unlike anything ever seen.



Speaking of something that’s unlike anything else, there’s the low budget horror film, ThanksKilling (2008) about a killer turkey, named “Turkie” (you read that correctly!).

Yes, it's real. Here at Communerdy, we're not sure whether we should be thankful or not.

Another “turkey tale” is 2013’s Free Birds, an animated feature about two turkeys (voiced by Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson) who travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving to change history by getting turkeys off the menu.

If you don’t want that offbeat a take on the holiday, perhaps a movie about bringing dysfunctional families together for Thanksgiving?  There’s Home for the Holidays, (1995) a comedy, directed by actress Jodie Foster, that features an ensemble cast that includes Holly Hunter, Robert Downey, Jr., Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning and Steve Guttenberg as a family, with their own form of “drama,” who come together for Thanksgiving.   

In Pieces of April (2003), a young, bohemian woman (Katie Holmes) has to get through a number of obstacles as she attempts to cook her first Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family.

There’s even an updated take on these dysfunctional family “get togethers” with this year’s Friendsgiving, in which Malian Akerman plays an actress who finds herself hosting an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner for friends and strangers (emphasis on strange).

Two movies get dramatic and take on the entire Thanksgiving weekend. In 1992’s Scent of a Woman, Chris O’Donnell plays a prep school student who agrees to take a job as an assistant to a retired, blind Army officer, with a volatile temper (Al Pacino in his amazing, Oscar-winning performance). The two embark on an impromptu trip to New York City over Thanksgiving weekend, that turns out to be life changing for both.

Then there’s The Ice Storm (1997), another look at dysfunctional families, with another all-star cast, including Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen and Elijah Wood, with all of the drama unfolding over Thanksgiving weekend, 1973.

And, what’s Thanksgiving weekend without Black Friday (something else that will look much different this year). In 2009, Kevin James starred as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a comedic take on Die Hard, in which a security guard saves a mall from terrorists on the busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday.

Another Thanksgiving tradition that will look much different thanks to 2020 will be the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The action-comedy Tower Heist (2011) in which Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an unlikely team, who had lost their savings thanks to a crooked Wall Street businessman, who had invested and lost their money. The group attempts to break into the businessman’s New York City apartment and regain what’s theirs. As a “distraction” during the heist, they try to pull it off during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which passes right by the tower.

And, no conversation about the Parade would be complete without discussing Miracle on 34^th St. In addition to the 1947 original, there was also a made-for-TV version in 1973 and a big budget, theatrical remake in 1994.

All versions center on the real Santa Claus filling in for an inebriated Santa in the Thanksgiving Day Parade and then taking over the role full-time at Macy’s throughout the Christmas season (Cole’s department store in the 1994 version).

Whether your “Santa of choice” is Edmund Gwenn (who won an Oscar for the original), Sebastian Cabot (1973) or Richard Attenborough (1994), Miracle on 34^th St is actually the perfect film to “cap off” Thanksgiving and watch right after your turkey dinner, as it starts on Thanksgiving and concludes on Christmas Day, celebrating the whole Holiday Season.



When it comes to celebrating the Season, any and all of these movies make for perfect movie binging before the actual binging begins. They all also help remind us to give thanks for Thanksgiving as something more than just “pre-Christmas.” And giving thanks for anything and everything is something that we could all use a lot more of this year.