Thanksgiving movies have all the heart, even if Christmas movies get all the publicity. People returning to their hometowns for Thanksgiving break envision family togetherness, playing sports with friends, and food. Basically, the fundamental ingredients of a Thanksgiving movie are just so comfortable and homely. So, when you are done with the turkey meal and Thanksgiving desserts, it\u2019s only natural to unbutton your jeans, saunter over to the couch, and curl up with a decent movie. (You can go to the huge multiplex when you\u2019ve digested.)<\/p>\n
After the plates have been cleared and you\u2019re too exhausted to do anything else, these are the best movies to watch on Thanksgiving. Some are suitable for all members of the family, from the tiniest gobblers to the most venerable great-grandmothers. Others should be saved until after the youngsters have gone to bed. The majority of them feature Thanksgiving as a backdrop, while others have lengthier timelines but still contain memorable Thanksgiving scenes. Some aren\u2019t explicitly about Turkey Day but operate on a conceptual level with food and family imagery. And because everyone knows that once the last bite of pie is gone, the holiday season really begins, we\u2019ve included several Thanksgiving-to-Christmas movies as well.<\/p>\n
In other words, include these, as well as food and football, in your family\u2019s traditions.<\/p>\n
Without any further delays, let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n
Here are some epic Thanksgiving movies to give you the thrills on movie night.<\/p>\n
Greta Gerwig plays Brooke, the freewheeling soon-to-be stepsister of Lola Kirke\u2019s Tracy, a freshman at Barnard, in this profoundly amusing comedy from Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig. Tracy makes a fast friend\u2014and the material for a story\u2014as she adjusts to life in New York, and all kinds of mischief and drama occur. We won\u2019t say much more about it since we don\u2019t want to give anything away, but suffice it to say that it is one of the several movies that ends with a deliciously New York-style Thanksgiving feast.<\/p>\n
Krisha Fairchild plays Krisha, a recovering addict who invites her estranged extended family home for Thanksgiving dinner in Trey Edward Shults\u2019 blistering feature-length directorial debut. While the day starts out peacefully enough, tempers flare, sentiments are wounded, and it becomes evident that Krisha isn\u2019t quite as rehabilitated as she claims.<\/p>\n
The Blind Side, a 2009 film starring Sandra Bullock, is one you\u2019ll want to watch with your entire family. One of the most touching and frankly bawl-worthy moments of the film, which centers on the adoption of a young man named Michael and his subsequent rise to football stardom, is when a sad, lonely Michael finally starts to feel like part of a family on Thanksgiving; we finally start to see him open up and feel like there\u2019s hope for his future.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be fooled: Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler feature in Judd Apatow\u2019s flick, which is more of a tearjerker than a laugh-out-loud comedy. The story revolves around a comedian who discovers he has late-stage cancer and is running out of time. But it\u2019s the friendship between the two characters that propel Funny People forward, and there\u2019s a particularly moving scene at a Thanksgiving dinner in which Sandler\u2019s George broaches the subject of growing old and being alone that will make you want to hug all your friends and thank them for being so important to you.<\/p>\n
The Segway-riding mall officer may not be the most cerebral lead, but this Kevin James film has developed a cult following in the years since its premiere, thanks in part to a late-blooming meme campaign. Paul Blart: Mall Officer is a few minutes of dumb entertainment that revolves around a busy mall being held hostage on Black Friday, possibly the worst day of the year for a mall cop.<\/p>\n
A family gathers to remember the 12-year anniversary of a devastating death in Hirokazu Kore-emotional eda\u2019s film, which he wrote, directed, and edited. Still, Still Walking, which takes place over the course of roughly a day, has a strong Thanksgiving-weekend vibe to it: grandparents interact with grandkids, food is lovingly made, and ancient tensions are gradually exposed.<\/p>\n
In the opening scenes of Dan in Real Life, widower and single dad Dan Burns (played by Steve Carell) pays a visit to his family for Thanksgiving. Dan has a crush on a woman who turns out to be his brother\u2019s girlfriend in this heartwarming drama.<\/p>\n
Much of the conversation and plot of the mockumentary, For Your Consideration is improvised by the cast, as it is in any Christopher Guest production. When a terrible film is made, no one notices; but, when word spreads that it will be an Oscar winner, everything is turned up to 11 and the cast and crew become embroiled in a slew of misadventures. In terms of how all of this connects to Thanksgiving, the film-within-a-film was originally titled Home for Purim before being renamed Home for Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n
Even though the majority of Brokeback Mountain takes place outside on the plains, one of the most crucial scenes occurs over Thanksgiving, when Ennis\u2019 ex-wife confronts him about his connection with Jack.<\/p>\n
After her mother is diagnosed with cancer, April (Katie Holmes) prepares a Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family, and Pieces of April checks all the boxes for a pleasant Thanksgiving watch\u2014especially since Patricia Clarkson was nominated for an Oscar for her depiction of the ailing mother. There\u2019s also a plot for everyone here: April\u2019s frantic preparations and near-misses with disaster when her oven fails her; her boyfriend Bobby\u2019s attempts to make a good impression on her parents; and the family\u2019s own attempts to reconcile their thoughts about the past while making the trip to Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Thanksgiving doesn\u2019t have to be all about turkey and mashed potatoes. As What\u2019s Cooking? shows the diversity of Vietnamese, Jewish, Latino, and African American families\u2019 festivities.<\/p>\n
While you don\u2019t need an excuse to watch the classic 1998 romantic comedy, you now have one: On Thanksgiving, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan\u2019s legendary moment in which Joe Fox saves the day in a Zabar\u2019s cash-only wait truly takes place. You\u2019ve Got Mail is known for its holiday theme, but it\u2019s also known for the story of two business rivals who fall in love inadvertently over the first version of the internet.<\/p>\n
In the black comedy The House of Yes, which takes place on Thanksgiving Day 1983 and revolves around college student Marty Pascal bringing his fianc\u00e9e (played by Tori Spelling) home to meet his parents, Parker Posey is a revelation as a Jackie O\u2013obsessed twin.<\/p>\n
The only film on the list that could ring a bell because it\u2019s about Thanksgiving: The Ice Storm, set in 1973 and centered on two suburban families attempting to celebrate Thanksgiving, depicts the extremes of suburban dysfunction through sexual identity, drink, drugs, and the human condition. The Ice Storm, based on a best-selling Rick Moody novel and directed by the famous Ang Lee, stars a stellar cast and features one of the most unforgettable and mind-blowing moments in recent memory, including Elijah Wood and electrocution.<\/p>\n
Home for the Holidays, based on a short story by Chris Radant, stars Holly Hunter (as Claudia, a recently fired art restorer who flies home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving), Robert Downey Jr. (as Tommy, Claudia\u2019s younger brother), Dylan McDermott (as Leo, Tommy\u2019s friend), Anne Bancroft (as Adele, her mother), Charles Durning (as Henry, her father), and Geraldine Chaplin (as Aunt Glady)<\/p>\n
The sequel to The Addams Family contains an outstanding narrative in which Christina Ricci\u2019s Wednesday Addams recreates the Thanksgiving story at her summer camp in a magnificent way. While the play itself burns (literally), the all-star ensemble of Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values will have you giggling on the couch as the turkey digests.<\/p>\n
A prep-school teenager (Chris O\u2019Donnell) undertakes to look for a blind, alcoholic retired Army Ranger (played by Al Pacino in an Academy Award-winning performance) over Thanksgiving weekend in order to pay for his flight home for Christmas. The latter takes the former on a whirlwind, glitzy tour of New York City, complete with a pretty dramatic detour to an estranged family member\u2019s Thanksgiving dinner. When watching Scent of a Woman, keep Kleenex on hand.<\/p>\n
Babette\u2019s Feast, based on Isak Dinesen\u2019s short story, isn\u2019t precisely a Thanksgiving movie (it takes place in 19th-century Denmark), but it is about generosity and community and revolves around a beautiful meal. Prepare to be completely delighted, both you and your family.<\/p>\n
In possibly the most iconic concert video ever, Martin Scorsese memorably caught The Band\u2019s final performance at San Francisco\u2019s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day 1976. In The Last Waltz, look for music icons like the Staple Singers and Bob Dylan, as well as Rick Danko of the Band, who takes the time to wish the audience a merry holiday.<\/p>\n
The 1976 boxing picture features one of Sylvester Stallone\u2019s best performances, but if you set the heavyweight championship plot aside for a moment, there\u2019s a fantastic Thanksgiving scene in which a turkey is thrown out the back door\u2014an occurrence that leads to a date for the film\u2019s hero.<\/p>\n
Another film that, on the surface, has nothing to do with Thanksgiving but feels curiously appropriate for the occasion. Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy (in his penultimate film appearance), and Katharine Houghton (Hepburn\u2019s real-life niece) star in the film Guess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner, which tells the story of an interracial couple battling for their parents\u2019 favor. In our opinion, conflict plus a climactic feast equals the ideal Thanksgiving menu.<\/p>\n
This narrative may seem a little too obvious based on the chats you\u2019ve had with some family this year. Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish star as a pair who must deal with the \u201coath,\u201d a new government initiative that requires everyone to make an oath of fealty to the president of the United States before Black Friday.<\/p>\n
Okay, so if it was called Turkey Run, it would be more true to the Thanksgiving canon. However, for obvious reasons, this feature picture debut from the legendary Aardman animation studio is a Thanksgiving hit. The stop-motion animation, which follows a group of birds who are determined to avoid being converted into chicken pies, is both humorous and artistically stunning.<\/p>\n
The Big Chill is a darker take on the traditional picture of a reunion, but it maintains a right blend of uplifting friendship and gravity for the Christmas season. The film follows a group of old college buddies as they reconvene following the suicide of one of their close friends.<\/p>\n
Guthrie plays himself on a journey to his friend\u2019s house for Thanksgiving after getting tossed out of college in this comedy based on Arlo Guthrie\u2019s folk song \u201cAlice\u2019s Restaurant Massacree.\u201d After enrolling in college to avoid the draft, the events of the night come full circle in an ironic way.<\/p>\n
Spike Lee\u2019s landmark film She\u2019s Gotta Have It, which follows a woman\u2019s love triangle between three rival boyfriends, isn\u2019t usually included in the benign holiday canon. Few films have included a more memorable Thanksgiving dinner than Nola Darling\u2019s, in which she invites all three men to the table to enjoy the holiday while she sits at the head.<\/p>\n
You haven\u2019t truly experienced the holiday season unless you\u2019ve seen at least one made-for-TV film. This one is about Claudia, an aspirant lawyer who finds herself in an alternate universe where she is a soccer mom. Fay Dunaway, her sort-of guardian angel, is responsible for all of this. The plot of this film might be the subject of a whole gender studies thesis, but the tension begins when Claudia is forced by her sister to prepare a pie for Thanksgiving. As a result, you could say it\u2019s a pie movie (enter Betty Friedan once again).<\/p>\n
This one isn\u2019t about Thanksgiving at all, but it is about a family that is imploding, so it seems appropriate. This film is based on Tracey Letts\u2019 play, which was made into a film in 2014. It follows a family as they mourn the passing of their dad while also dealing with their ill, depressive, and abusive grandmother. There\u2019s nothing more to say about Meryl Streep\u2019s violent altercation with Julia Roberts.<\/p>\n
Charlize Theron is a famous actress. Keanu Reeves is a well-known actor. A film from the year 2001. Sara, played by Charlize Theron, meets Nelson (Keanu Reeves) at the DMV, where they form a lasting friendship. Sara invites Nelson to spend November with her and vows to make a positive difference in his life. So these two spend a month together, but there\u2019s more to the story than Nelson realizes.<\/p>\n
Although Christmas Vacation is in a class by itself, the entire National Lampoon franchise is always a hit with families during the holidays. Bryan Cranston plays the quirky hippy and long-lost cousin of a suburban man Mitch Snyder in this remake of Malcolm in the Middle. Embarrassing family hijinks ensue.<\/p>\n
In John Hughes\u2019 1987 comedy Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Steve Martin\u2019s marketing executive just wants to get home to New York for Thanksgiving, but fate\u2013well, fate and John Candy\u2019s shower-ring salesman, a chipper and clumsy clown who becomes his unlikely traveling companion during this rollicking three-day odyssey\u2013constantly thwarts his plans. The pillow joke is still one of the most well-known.<\/p>\n
This Peanuts holiday special is a wonderful holdout between Halloween and Christmas, albeit it\u2019s not as iconic as A Charlie Brown Christmas or It\u2019s the Great Pumpkin. Peppermint Patty infiltrates Charlie Brown\u2019s Thanksgiving vacation, which he inevitably scrambles to put together with his characteristic nervousness in this Emmy-winning classic. (By the way, where are these kids\u2019 parents?)<\/p>\n
Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is clever beyond his years, and he\u2019s undoubtedly appealing to his boarding school\u2019s other 15-year-olds. But he isn\u2019t interested in females his age, preferring to focus on his stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver); who is blissfully unaware of his feelings for her. Oscar, on the other hand, devises a plot to seduce Eve\u2019s closest friend over Thanksgiving break in order to make his stepmother jealous.<\/p>\n
This animated comedy stars Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Amy Poehler, and George Takei. Reggie is a turkey who was fortunate enough to be pardoned by the President of the United States on Thanksgiving. Jake, on the other hand, is a political wild turkey who kidnaps Jake in order to promote the Turkey Freedom Front, a guerilla organization dedicated to putting an end to Thanksgiving for good. They use a time machine to travel back to the first Thanksgiving and eliminate turkeys off the menu for good.<\/p>\n
Pauly Shore, believe it or not, was once a movie star. Shore was every parent\u2019s worst nightmare as the quintessential \u201990s slacker dimwit\u2014never more so than in the fish-out-of-water comedy, which stars Shore as Crawl, the unexpected partner of small-town girl Becca (Carla Gugino). Becca drags Crawl back home for Thanksgiving, much to her conservative farmer father\u2019s chagrin. When Crawl announces his intention to propose to Becca during the holiday weekend, tensions only grow.<\/p>\n
Hope Davis plays Eliza, a New York lady who is happily married to Louis (Stanely Tucci)\u2014or so she thinks\u2014in Greg Mottola\u2019s low-budget indie comedy. Eliza discovers a love letter from Louis to an unknown woman while visiting her parents for Thanksgiving. When she confides in her family, the entire family piles into the family station wagon and drives from Long Island to Manhattan, looking for answers.<\/p>\n
Nobody\u2019s Fool is one of Paul Newman\u2019s final great leading roles, in which he plays a construction worker hustler in upstate New York who is always at odds with a contractor (Bruce Willis) whose wife (Melanie Griffith) he lusts after. The arrival of his estranged son (Dylan Walsh) around Thanksgiving throws his routine into disarray; resulting in a hilarious (and disarming) holiday-set character study on loneliness, reconciliation, and the surprising ways people find happiness.<\/p>\n
In this 1991 comedy, Ed O\u2019Neill gives an underappreciated big-screen performance in a road trip home for Thanksgiving by two argumentative guys, similar to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. They\u2019re O\u2019Neill\u2019s obnoxious slob and Ethan Embry\u2019s snobbish prep-school kid\u2013the son of O\u2019Neill\u2019s fianc\u00e9e (JoBeth Williams)\u2013who form a lasting friendship through a series of misadventures.<\/p>\n
Woody Allen\u2019s 1986 comedic drama, which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor and Actress statuettes for Michael Caine and Diane Wiest, respectively, opens and closes with scenes of its characters at Thanksgiving dinner, tells a slew of interconnected stories, all of which are in some way related to Mia Farrow\u2019s Hannah and her two siblings. It\u2019s one of the writer-crowning director\u2019s achievements, equal parts amusing and heartbreaking.<\/p>\n
There are a number of other non-food Thanksgiving traditions, such as getting together with old high school friends before the big meal and, of course, football. This is one of the movies that blends the two in a story about a man who is summoned to his hometown for Thanksgiving in order to re-enact a football game between fierce rivals that was canceled 15 years ago due to snow.<\/p>\n
On Thanksgiving, we can always count on Anne Shirley. On Turkey Day, PBS used to screen a new Anne of Green Gables film, eternally linking her to the holiday. In this film, Anne attends a city high school and becomes disoriented.<\/p>\n
Lauren travels to her birthplace of New Jersey for Thanksgiving with her girlfriend, with the goal of coming out to her conservative parents. Lauren\u2019s family believes Austin, her male roommate, is her boyfriend, which causes confusion (and amusement).<\/p>\n
Nothing says holiday cheer like a Jim Henson puppet show! And, since Emmet Otter\u2019s Jug-Band Christmas isn\u2019t available yet, settle with this story about kids who investigate a local monster legend while visiting relatives.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult not to cry as you witness Michael Oher, a homeless 17-year-old, have a Thanksgiving meal with the Tuohys for the first time. This is the point at which he realizes how welcome he is (and makes us realize just how thankful we are for our own family and friends).<\/p>\n
Try not to fall in love with this John Hughes film\u2019s charming heroine, who helps a homeless man swindle people for food and shelter. It\u2019s just crisp enough to avoid being too sweet (though it can get cutesy).<\/p>\n
On the contrary, there are tons of Thanksgiving movies out there to pick from. You may just have been, like the popular saying goes, barking on the wrong tree. Some of the best Thanksgiving movies out there include; Krisha, the Mall Cop, Home for the Holidays, and so on<\/p>\n
Paul Blart Mall Cop is listed as one of the many Thanksgiving movies out there which has the least amount of material tying it to the day at all. What I am trying to say is that it is just a holiday movie and not necessarily a Thanksgiving movie.<\/p>\n
Yes, Disney has a couple of Thanksgiving movies on their Disney Plus list; some of which include Ice Princess, Annie, Invincible, and so on. All it takes, however, is a subscription.<\/p>\n
A survey done in December 2022 found that “Home Alone” was the most watched Christmas movie in the United States. 87 percent of people who took the survey said they had seen it. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” was Chris Columbus’s follow-up to his 1990 comedy classic. It came out in 2000. Jan<\/p>\n
With a list of Thanksgiving movies in place, my guess is you\u2019re at least 40% set for the holiday. All that\u2019s left is a location, choice of food, and costume.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, you can also go through our post on open restaurants on Thanksgiving day.<\/p>\n