Leading up to this year’s Winter Break, the members of the Falcon Press Staff will be sharing their favorite holiday films each of the 12 days leading up to the last day of school on Friday, Dec. 20. We hope you enjoy this feature, our thoughts on the movies listed, and the memories we associate with them!
Rick Pecka – “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “The Muppet Christmas Carol”
It’s hard for me to pick between these two, because “Christmas Vacation” is my personal favorite, but I can’t just ignore the Muppets. To me, “Christmas Vacation” is Chevy Chase’s last truly funny film, and it’s the perfect mix of ‘80s humor and genuine warmth. Now that I’m a dad, I feel more connected to Chase’s character of Clark Griswold. I can relate to the stress that comes from preparing for the holidays (I’ve had my own nightmares with setting up Christmas lights, though nothing to the scale of the Griswold house), but also just want my family to have the best holiday possible. As for “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” this is one of my wife’s all-time favorites from her childhood. Watching it as an adult with my kids, it really is the perfect family film for the holidays, with the right mix of zaniness and heartfelt emotion. Plus, I just love the fact that it’s an accurate retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic. Michael Caine is the perfect Ebenezer Scrooge, and he plays the whole thing straight, treating each Muppet as if they were a classically trained actor straight out of the Globe Theatre. To me, the month of December doesn’t feel complete until I’ve watched each of these at least once.
