It is two days before Thanksgiving, and I am watching a Christmas Movie: Love the Coopers (2015). The weather is finally Novembery and while it seems too early for a Christmas movie, it is turning out to be the perfect movie for this evening.
The film has, I want to say star studded cast, but maybe a solid well know cast is a better term. Diane Keaton and John Goodman star as a couple in their sixties hosting a last Christmas in their lovely home before telling their family in the New Year, that they will be divorcing. Alan Arkin plays Keaton’s father and Marisa Tomei plays her sister. The rest of the cast, that are familiar to me, include Ed Helms and Amanda Seyfried
Set in snowy Pittsburgh, the movie at times has a Hallmark Christmas movie feel with classic carolers and department store Santas to it to evoke what I have to save is a perfect amount of nostalgia. It is narrated, just the right amount of exquisitely written affirmations and insights that the Christmas movies are peppered with. There are flashbacks, again wonderfully well timed, that add more nostalgia and affirmations. This also contributes to the nostalgic courses of this film. But Love the Coopers is also a modern saga of a functionally dysfunctional family dealing with the complexities of modern life of a divorced son who just got laid off, a daughter who is having an affair with a married man, a grandson experiencing the joy of first love, and another, younger, grandson unhappy about his parents’ divorce. Of course, everything concludes with the biggest conflicts resolved and, as all good Christmas movies must, hopefully and warmly.
My favorite Christmas movies are basically the favorite Christmas movies of so many others. The include, in no particular order, It’s a Wonderful Life, Love Actually, A Christmas Story, and select versions of A Christmas Carol. In the second tier are most of the other movies that include Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Elf, White Chrsitmas, The Bishop’s Wife, and Miracle on 34th Street. All of my favorite Christmas movies have many of the same elements: nostalgia, multiple story lines, conflict resolution (OK… this happens in every movie ever made), and they all end in a wonderfully, seasonal, warm, and hopeful place with a positive outlook for the future.
I watched Love the Coopers when it first came was on cable. I thought it was good, but it did not resonate and have the impact it did this evening. I do believe that I needed a dose of nostalgia and a wee bit of a hopeful ending. It is now a favorite movie of mine that I will look for every year.
Christmas has certainly gotten way to commercialized. The hype seems to start earlier and earlier every year. Black Friday seems to have taken over the month of November. We have already ordered our Christmas cards and have already mailed the first wave, to immediate family, out. While I am fully aware that movie making is a business, a movie like this, Love the Coopers, is a respite, an oasis, from the hype and commercialization.
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