The Best Thanksgiving Movies of All the Times, Ever, that are in Existence

Thanksgiving is just a week away so why not whittle away the time it takes to thaw a turkey by watching all the best movies in, around, and about Thanksgiving.... ever. If you have any other suggestions or disagree with any point on this list, such as the order from less perfect to absolute perfect, then you are wrong. No gravy for you!

It only goes down from here. For Pauly Shore that is.

16. Son in Law (1993) - Though it doesn’t mean much to say this is easily the best film of the in-illustrious Pauly Shore canon. Shore plays Crawl a drugged out so-cal clown who accompanies his female college friend on an improbable trip back home to her conservative South Dakota farming town for the Thanksgiving holiday.  While back home, horror of horrors, her long-distance jock boy friend attempts to propose and in a last ditch attempt to avoid getting married she enlists the help of Crawl, a semi-coherent emasculated west-hollywood scarecrow, who proceeds to feign having already proposed marriage himself....much hilarity ensues as he attempts to endear himself to his brand new farmer in-laws. And I mean that, much hilarity actually does ensue. As a situation comedy it can be pretty golden but beyond this it’s a pretty weak to average movie, which again makes it the freaking Citizen Kane of Pauley Shore movies.

15. Mayflower: the Pilgrim’s Adventure (1979) - In 1952 MGM released a bloated Cleopatra style sea-epic called the Plymouth Adventure which starred Spencer Tracey. It was a boring and banal movie that focussed exclusively on the harrowing trip taken by the Plymouth colonists on their way to the New World....lots of being sea sick. It’s not very good. Fast forward to 1979 and we finally got Mayflower: the Pilgrims’s Adventure, which is a smaller budgeted t.v. movie that was less banal and representative of a slightly less boring take on the very same idea: the pilgrim’s sea journey.  This time around the acting/dialogue is less campy and instead of “epic thrills” there is an earnest attempt to depict real human drama in its historical context. It even has a young Anthony Hopkins as the captain of the Mayflower, though, sadly, he does not murder and subsequently eat any of the passengers on board. Picture that for your Thanksgiving dinner, Clarice.

14. Garfield’s Thanksgiving (1989) - What would Thanksgiving be without America’s favorite glutton? Well I don’t know of any Simpson’s thanksgiving episodes that I could watch so as to recommend, so how about Garfield the cat as second place to Homer? John Arbuckle takes Garfield to the vet and lands a Thanksgiving dinner date with the veterinarian. Unfortunately for Garfield the vet has put him on a low carb, low fat, low calorie diet and John doesn’t know how to cook, anything. It doesn’t focus much on the holiday itself but it’s very funny and constitutes good, clean “family fun”.

How many people have even heard of this movie?

13. Avalon (1990) - A long, slow, plodding, and yet thoroughly engaging and visually beautiful film about the life of several generations of European Jewish immigrants who repeatedly meet for a series Thanksgiving dinners that are spread out over a particularly tumultuous period in their lives. It also happens to be set during the late 1940s and early 1950s. While not quite as much fun as Seinfeld, it’s pretty much the same basic idea: “Why do we always eat this turkey? I don’t even like turkey, oy!”

12. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) - A highly introspective and dry comedy about a group of self-indulgent New Yorkers that takes places over a period of years that encompasses several Thanksgiving get togethers. It’s not for everyone, I don’t even think it’s for me, but the parts about Woody Allen’s character coming to terms with an existential crisis, in the face of what he takes to be a near death experience, are extremely funny. And a little depressing. The rest is pretty much just watching old, rich, white people have a bunch of joyless non-fecund sex with each other.....as they are prone to doing in these Manhattan set things.

11. An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving (2008) - Based on a story by Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), and made by *shudder* Hallmark, this is pretty much the best made-for-t.v. holiday chick-flick that I have ever seen....and I have been forced to sit through a lot of them.... far, far too many of them.... like, one is too many.... Anyway, it’s not as good as gravy or anything but there is a story here that I actually cared about and it was carried by competent acting and knock down gorgeous sets and costumes....teehee. It made me want to adorn myself handsomely and then trudge around in the snow, but as one character reminds us, “the snow is just a place to get stuck and freeze to death”.

                                                                      Comedy Gold

10. Meet the Parent’s (2000) - Wait, what? This isn’t a Thanksgiving movie! No, but for whatever reason I associate this much beloved classic very strongly with the holiday and it’s obvious why: Ben Stiller’s incredibly funny, improvised prayer of thanks before a family dinner. One of my favorite scenes in any movie, ever.

"We cannot break bread with you...."

9. Adams Family Values (1993) - The Adams Family movies are way underrated in my opinion and I actually think that this is the best of the two, thanks to Joan Cusack. It isn’t exactly about Thanksgiving but there is a great scene involving an incredibly racist/funny (interchangeable terms) Thanksgiving pageant that is taken over by Wednesday Adams who, dressed as Pocahontas, punishes the pilgrims for what their descendants would eventually do to the “Native Americans”, or more properly, “the people who were living here prior to the people who live here now”. 

I will cut all their throats as they sleep....or I will teach them how to plant corn, whichever comes first!

8. Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale (1994) - A wildly inaccurate (I mean to epic proportions) depiction of the life of Squanto, the English speaking European educated Patuxet Indian who famously came to the aid of the Plymouth Colony pilgrims with his valuable knowledge of “how to not starve or freeze to death during a New England winter”. Squanto stars the dreamy and now famous Adam Beach as Squanto: an Indian “warrior” (apparently all Indians are “warriors”) endowed with such ridiculously patronizing magical powers as being able to talk to animals, wrestle bears and not die, and summon the “spirits of nature and shit like that”. This isn’t a bad movie, in fact, it’s a pretty good action/adventure film and one of the most underrated movies in the entire secret underground, gold-encased Disney movie vault. It’s also insultingly and bafflingly inaccurate in terms of its historical content. Still, it’s one of the only truly entertaining movies in existence that attempts to dramatize the events that surround what we have come to call “the first thanksgiving” and that’s enough to warrant a viewing this time of year.

7. The Mouse on the Mayflower (1968) - After the Hobbit this is probably my favorite Rankin and Bass animated t.v. movie. As it turns out, mice had a big role to play in ensuring that the Pilgrims and Indians of Plymouth decided to kill turkeys instead of each other. It seems plausible enough. Plus there is half-way decent animation and a great folksy soundtrack that is, thanks be to God, not performed by Arlo Guthrie.

6. The Ice Storm (1997) - A dark drama about upper middle class people in the 1970s who have embraced the sexual revolution to their near total ruin. It was directed by Ang Lee so expect stunning visual treatment on top of the brooding characters all full of angst and despair. Also expect to see Christina Ricci reprise her role as Wednesday Adams as she delivers a sardonic Thanksgiving day prayer that is eerily reminiscent of the Thanksgiving speech she gave several years prior in Adams Family Values. It’s a joylessly beautiful and meaningful movie full of bitter feelings....just like a real Thanksgiving dinner with your relatives.

5. Plymouth Colony: The Pilgrims (1955?) - This is an odd one, it’s not really a movie so much as a visual encyclopedia entry done by Britannica. I can’t find any information about it beyond this: who made it? the names of the actors? was it released in theaters? I can’t say, but it is really well done and I had a lot of fun watching it. Lasting only about half an hour it dramatizes the basic outline of the pilgrim’s journey to Plymouth, their hard first year, and eventually summarizes their famous dinner with 90 tribal warriors. The acting is fantastic and it tries very hard to just stick to the facts, as they are known. Sad as it is to say, this short and obscure encyclopedia entry is to date the single best movie ever specifically made about the first thanksgiving story.

4. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - For many this is the absolute gold standard of Thanksgiving movies and I can see why. It’s absolutely hilarious, has a great John Hughes 80s soundtrack (I love those), and has a really wonderful ending that would melt any frozen turkey heart into a puddle of delicious gooey giblet gravy (best metaphor ever right there).

Steve Martin plays an uptight rich guy trying to get from New York back to his family in Chicago for Thanksgiving dinner but he’s seriously delayed when an unfortunate (and all too common) snow storm closes the airport in Chicago. To make matters worse he’s “helped” by a perfect foil in John Candy who plays a bungling Canadian oaf who doesn’t seem to have anywhere he needs to be, ever.

The pair go through a series of comic mishaps that keep forcing them together, long after they’ve worn on each other, as they desperately attempt to find alternative ways to get back to Chicago in time. It’s an inspiring film. It inspires me to never let my family travel during the holidays ever. We have enough problems right here without having to do battle with the rental car company after they’ve dropped us off in the middle of nowhere with the key to a car that doesn’t even *&%$ing exist.

3. Broadway Danny Rose (1984) - Another Woody Allen movie, but much warmer and more entertaining. Danny rose is an inept talent agent who lets his personal affection for his clients cloud his judgement. He’s had some successes but he always loses them the moment they make it and this time his latest break through doesn’t just break his heart but forces him into accidentally crossing the mob. Mia Farrow is involved and she is amazing as always. The final act involves not just a chase through Thanksgiving day parade floats but a touching Thanksgiving dinner scene that brings Danny Rose together with his truest and only friends in life, his talentless clientele.

2. Spider-man (2002) - While not a Thanksgiving movie, exactly, it does have a great Thanksgiving dinner scene that nearly brings Spider-man and the Green Goblin together for dinner, which is why I always remember this movie at this time of year. As a movie it just so happens to be one of my all time favorites, Raimi is one of my all time favorite directors, and I still believe that his Spider-Man series constitutes the greatest superhero movies of all time....and  Spider-man also happens to be my favorite comic book hero of all time. So, yes, I am quite prejudiced here.....but wouldn’t it be totally amazing to have Spider-man at your house for Thanksgiving dinner? “Please pass the mashed potatoes...*thwack!*....NICE. Now pass the pumpkin pie *thwack*....”

1. Pieces of April (2003) - The best Thanksgiving movie is a independent film starring Katie Holmes about a hardened young woman’s desperate attempt to host a Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family at her dilapidated inner city apartment in an attempt to see her mother who is dying from cancer....it’s a comedy.

April has never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner before, or much of anything else from what it seems, and wouldn’t you know that she picked the absolute worst day to discover that her shitty little oven doesn’t even work at all. While April has to run around her building looking for help from anyone who can give it her mother has to endure a long, sickening, and pensive ride with the rest of her not-so-hardened suburban family. The movie is broken up into these two stories, which chronicle both sides of April’s estrangement from her mother, and then they finally converge into one great big tear jerking spectacle. 

It’s one the best mother/daughter dramas that I have ever seen and Patricia Clarkson as April’s pained yet jovial mother is the real show stealer here. Someone give that woman a turkey leg because she ripped my heart right out of my thoracic cavity, chopped it up with some sage, and cooked it in a sauce pan with broth, white wine, and a little all-purpose flour for about 10 min or until thickened and then poured it all over her mashed potatoes. I love this movie, and unless you’re a Stalinist or a Nazi, then you will too.