There Are No Good Thanksgiving Movies

Everyone loves a great Christmas film, but the best ones for turkey day come from television

We all have our favorite holiday movies and they all involve Christmas in some way. Nobody talks about their favorite Thanksgiving movies because there really aren’t any. A quick scan of any “best of” list online pertaining to this holiday really only shows people struggling to wedge something in.

Movies that just happen to take place on Thanksgiving don’t really count, so no You’ve Got Mail, Tower Heist, Addams Family Values, or The Blind Side.

Yes, The Humans takes place on Thanksgiving and it’s a good movie. Is that really one you would gather the family to watch, though?

The Last Waltz is one of my favorite concert movies. But just because it was filmed on Thanksgiving does not make it a Thanksgiving movie.

Friendsgiving? No, just no. Son in Law? Now you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Granted, there are a few decent Thanksgiving movies. Dan in Real Life does start with him visiting his family for the holiday and has a wonderful performance by Steve Carell, along with a really enjoyable soundtrack. Not sure if it rises to classic status, however.

Pieces of April is a Thanksgiving movie that does a good job of capturing the coming-apart-at-the-seams feeling of a chaotic holiday. Home for the Holidays has some good actors in it—Holly Hunter, Claire Danes, Robert Downey Jr.—but it isn’t so good that you would watch it repeatedly, and definitely not every year.

Here is where everyone mentions Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Okay, I am willing to say this almost works. A movie about traveling doesn’t really seem like an actual Thanksgiving movie, though, and honestly, it’s a bit predictable so it starts to falter on repeated viewings. This one feels like a dry run before John Hughes perfected his holiday movie with Home Alone three years later.

So, what is usually first on most people’s lists of favorite Thanksgiving movies? A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. And that basically proves my point, because it’s not even a movie; it’s a TV special.

Which brings me to my larger point: the reason Charlie Brown works and the reason there are no great Thanksgiving movies is that the holiday itself doesn’t work in movie form. All of the best Thanksgiving stories I can think of have been TV episodes.

How I feel about Thanksgiving entertainment is how I feel about the holiday itself: you gather with the same people every year and share rituals together. Ones that you have probably shared most of your life. My Thanksgiving dinner is basically the same meal I’ve had since I was a kid. It’s comforting to share the food and traditions with the same people every year.

We spend time with TV characters. Lots of episodes, over many years, and our relationship with them and their relationships with each other are different than the relationships we watch evolve in a two-hour movie. It’s hard to build up the emotional connection needed for a payoff in a Thanksgiving movie. I just never care all that much. Whereas a holiday TV show is a reward and a payoff for the time we have spent with these characters.

My favorite TV show Thanksgiving was the first season of Cheers because it really rounded out and paid off much of the character development we had seen in the first bunch of episodes. And it was the first time we saw any of them outside of the bar setting.

WKRP in Cincinnati also has a fantastic Thanksgiving episode that involves the best Turkey Giveaway of all time.

And yes, both WKRP and Cheers are about seven or eight episodes into season one, but that is enough time to establish characters that become fully realized in a holiday show.

The New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Gilmore Girls, Friends, and even The Simpsons all have memorable Thanksgiving episodes. And they work because we feel comfortable with these characters and enjoy seeing their holiday traditions. It feels earned.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving works for the exact same reason. We know Charlie Brown and Snoopy really well so we don’t need any backstory for the payoffs of the special.

Thanksgiving is a TV holiday because it’s a pretty simple, no-frills day that sometimes involves uncomfortable get-togethers with people you know really well and where things can go terribly wrong—which is the premise of most of the TV shows ever made.

So as much as I love movies, I say for Thanksgiving just skip them, pull up an old episode of one of your favorite TV shows, and settle into the tradition.