Obviously there are tons of Christmas movies. But Thanksgiving seems like the ignored holiday. Are there any movies specific to or centering around Thanksgiving? I am not interested in the Walton’s Thanksgiving movie or the Ed Asner made-for-tv movie about his daughters coming home. I’m thinking more along the lines of 30s/40s/50s released in the theater movies.
Miracle on 34th Street opens with the Macy’s parade but that’s the only one I can think of.
It’s from 1995, but Home for the Holidays, with Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr., is a very good movie about family gathering together on Thanksgiving. It’s pretty dark in spots, but overall it’s a good comedy.
I love using the line, “Where’ve you been – we ate already” whenever my sister’s family drives up for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
And this is from 2003, but Pieces of April is a wonderful Thanksgiving movie.
It’s been (regretfully) so long since I’ve seen it that I thought John Hughes’ Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) was about going home for Christmas, but it’s actually Thanksgiving.
In the even more recent (2011) Tower Heist, the robbery takes place during the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.
I was trying to think of this name yesterday. Somebody posted a Cracked link on Facebook about how all movies that have black men hooked up with white women are done for the “shock” value except for Love, Actually and Rachel Getting Married, and I haven’t seen the second one, but I was racking my brain for . . . that Thanksgiving movie! with Oliver Platt! Where the oven breaks! Good picture.
Alice’s Restaurant. It’s after Guthrie visits his friend Alice for Thanksgiving, he offers to transport her trash to the dump where… you know.
For Your Consideration, one of the Christopher Guest ensemble films, is about a movie originally called Home for Purim, which is then changed to Home for Thanksgiving.
Heh…I came in here to mention this one. The whole process of starting out as a little indie niche movie and everything scaling up in reaction to the buzz they’re getting is great.
I seem to recall someone saying, maybe here on the SDMB, that he had a tradition of watching this movie every Thanksgiving.
Thankskilling. A really, really bad attempt at a horror movie.
Dutch, like PT&A, is about people travelling to be somewhere on Thanksgiving, but it’s not really about Thanksgiving.
The Myth of Fingerprints, starring Roy Scheider, Julianne Moore, and Noah Wylie. I didn’t care for it much, but it is a Thanksgiving movie.
This is our traditional Thanksgiving movie. We also watch the Thanksgiving episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from season 4 “Pangs.”
Anya: I love a ritual sacrifice.
Buffy: Not really a one of those.
Anya: To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It’s a ritual sacrifice. With pie.
It’s one of my Thanksgiving movie traditions, along with others mentioned here Pieces of April and Home for the Holidays. I also watch The Ice Storm* and the WKRP in Cincinnati episode “Turkeys Away.”
*Not always in the mood every year, but I try.
Actually, would the traditional Thanksgiving movie be a Christmas movie? Or Wizard of Oz?
If you were lucky enough to get (I think) WOR out of Secaucus when you were a kid, the traditional Thanksgiving movies are from Toho Studios…
If it wasn’t me, it is now.
with God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
Yeah, I grew up with channel 9, but I thought it was the original King Kong that got shown on Thanksgiving. Toho movies (i.e. Godzilla & etc. monster movies) were usually a week long stretch on WABC’s The 4:30 Movie… 