Number Eight, of my Top Five Christmas Films
There are over a hundred Christmas films, but only eight are worth watching.
These are the eight films that pull something different out of the bag.
It doesn’t matter from where the ‘different’ is pulled.
Anything different is good.
The syrupy gloopyness in White Christmas is good, to begin with, but a binge of pure gloop gets tiresome and induces projectile vomiting after half an hour.
Besides, a prolonged diet of gloop hardens ones arteries, and is really bad for the soul.
Or something.
And yet White Christmas is on the list of many people.
Thereby proving that many people are fools.
So I’d like to begin this look at my Top Eight Christmas Films with a film that introduced the audience to many ‘different’ things:
8) Trading Places
This film has a special place in my heart. It was the first film that showed the level of work that Eddie Murphy was capable of (and consistently missed thereafter).
It’s worth investing the time in this film just to watch Eddie Murphy silently break the fourth wall, when futures/commodities are being explained to him.
But the film is much better than that one gold moment.
Ackroyd and Murphy play their parts superbly.
There is also an excellent supporting cast tucked away in Trading Places.
The performances by Jamie Lee Curtis (who, ordinarily, leaves me feeling a bit ‘meh’) and Denholm Elliot, are a little short of brilliant.
It almost seems cruel to leave Trading Places out of my Top Five.
But that’s the way this particular Christmas Cookie has crumbled.
I enjoyed Trading Places.
Same can’t be said of many of Eddie Murphy’s subsequent works.
Yeah, he’s made some bum choices.