Ha! Ha! Ha! Merry Christmas: Holiday movies that make with the funny

Without a doubt, unabashedly sappy Christmas movies have their place.

Traditionally, films whose storylines revolve around, or at least run parallel to, that popular winter holiday are designed to restores one’s faith in mankind, milk a few tears and create a warm, fuzzy feeling in newly-swelled hearts between refills of eggnog and awkward small talk with that uncle who makes an appearance every few years.

So you’d be forgiven for momentarily forgetting that a handful of movies openly send up the clichéd holiday super-feel-goodness that is a hallmark of said flicks. This particular breed of movie focuses on yuletide yuks instead of Christmas miracles and acts of unbelievable kindness are traded in for bouts of slapstick physical comedy. Audiences are invited to watch vice-prone characters tackle uncomfortable truths and make astute jabs at the artifice of forced family face time, all while behaving in a manner nowhere near in keeping with the holiday spirit.

Christmas may come but once a year and this girl would rather be laughing.

TOP 5 FUNNY CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

Basically, Clark Griswold + burly Cousin Eddie + 25, 000 roof lights + ’80s yuppies = comedy gold. The Griswolds are gearing up for a perfectly saccharine Christmas vacation, complete with a hefty holiday bonus that Clark has already invested, an outdoor lights display that could challenge the Star of Bethlehem for wattage power and good old fashioned Christmas cheer, when they are met with one hilarious, over-the-top setback after another. Even when Clark, ever the positive patriarch, tries to maintain a sunny disposition when crude Cousin Eddie makes an unexpected visit with his unkempt kin in tow, it’s only a matter of time before the Griswold Christmas is declared a complete disaster and the SWAT Team is called in. Instantly classic, highly rewatchable.

Scrooged (1988)

This reimagining of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” stars Bill Murray as vitriolic TV exec Frank Cross, a cynical, openly selfish cad who cares little about the season other than what the live version of the classic Christmas tale will mean for ratings. As the Ebenezer Scrooge stand-in, Cross is visited by three ghosts who show him where and when he lost his way, though updated and in the form of a crazed cab driver, violence-prone fairy (an effortlessly loopy Carol Kane) and Death himself. Knowing that the story will eventually end on an uplifting note doesn’t take away from Murray’s superbly dry delivery – who’s truly at his best when playing a crank – and illustrates that getting to a happy ending doesn’t have to involve travelling down a yellow-brick road. Here’s to a Murray Christmas!

The Ref (1994)

Denis Leary positively seethes from the screen in this acerbic comedy that has him playing unwilling marriage counsellor to a combative couple when a botched robbery job becomes a kidnapping. This fast-paced Christmas caper finds jewel thief Gus (Leary) paired with dysfunctional couple Carolyn (Judy Davis) and Lloyd (Kevin Spacey – showing shades of the controlled rage he would perfect in American Beauty) who never stop spewing cutting one-liners at each other, even when a gun is pulled or they’re bound to chairs with bungee cord. When Lloyd’s family shows up for the dreaded Christmas dinner, matters get worse and the bickering becomes more viciously funny. In Leary’s first starring role beyond the stand-up stage, we’re reminded that no one does blindingly angry quite like him.

Elf (2003)

While more overtly sentimental than the other fare on this list, Jon Favreau takes the fish-out-of-water premise and adds a comical holiday twist. Elf sees Will Ferrell trading in his arrogant buffoon shtick for a sweetly naïve goof, aptly named Buddy, who was orphaned and subsequently raised in the North Pole where he doesn’t exactly fit in. Living amongst Santa’s elves as a regular-sized man, Buddy has a considerable amount of trouble navigating the tiny world he inhabits, is no good at making toys and rightly suspects there may be something behind his outsider status. It’s soon revealed that Buddy found his way into Santa’s sleigh as a baby and was subsequently taken in as a member of the elfin brethren, where he’s been living for some 30 years. When Papa Elf tells him that his bio-dad (James Caan, on the naughty list, natch) is still alive, Buddy leaves home for the first time to find him – in New York City. Add in Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart, Ed Asner and an appropriately prickly Caan, and you’ve got yourself a holiday gem that’s funny without being cruel.

Bad Santa (2003)

There is, however, something to be said for giving audiences a truly sadistic Christmas movie and leave it to the warped mind behind the achingly honest doc Crumb and the indie treasure Ghost World to do just that. Bad Santa stars a gaunt, curmudgeonly Billy Bob Thornton as a vile, alcohol-soaked department store Santa whose hatred for the innocent children bobbing on his lap he’s barely interesting in concealing. Director Terry Zwigoff is willing to go to some dark places for well-deserved laughs and Thornton inhabits the role of Willie, an unapologetically “bad santa”, who, along with his partner Marcus, plans to ransack a department store on Christmas Eve. Somehow, Willie finds himself playing surrogate dad to a quiet, cherubic loner, though this doesn’t do anything to slow down his drinking or prevent him from succeeding as a low-rent, boozy Casanova – though it does help enormously that his conquest has a Santa fetish. This Christmas film isn’t afraid to revel in its characters gross imperfections and provides a biting antidote to the usual niceties that one expects from films with ‘Santa’ in their titles. The ideal anti-Christmas movie, if ever there was one.

Honourable mentions: Holiday hulks

Santa with Muscles (1996)

Hulk Hogan stars as a callous millionaire who develops amnesia, subsequently believes he’s Santa Claus and foils the wicked plans of a group of evil scientists in the span of three days. But don’t be fooled by its high-concept plot, this is silly Christmas nonsense at its best, which is to say, its worst. Ed Begley Jr. and Clint Howard slum it in supporting roles while the Hulkster is free to kick ass in full-on bulked-up Santa mode, with an appropriately skintight sleeveless suit, spouting catchphrases that likely didn’t get laughs at the table-read. Oh Santa, you sleigh me.

Jingle all the way (1996)

Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger made movies? In addition to a starring role by the Terminator himself, this hammy holiday flick boasts a cast that includes Phil Hartman and Sinbad – who, for a moment, were shaping up as a powerful mid-90s comedy odd-couple – and tells the openly materialistic tale of a harried father (Schwarzenegger) trying to get his son a TurboMan toy, where he is pitted against the rest of Minneapolis’ last-minute shoppers in presumably comic ways. As part of a re-branding effort to make Ahhhhnold more palatable to the movie-going masses, this stab at family fare doesn’t succeed though it is funny – just for all the wrong reasons.

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What are some of you holiday favourites? Do you like funny Christmas movies or prefer the classics? Discuss and share below!