So you love Christmas. You love cars. You love movies! And you have mixed feelings about harsh life lessons administered on a seasonal basis by supernatural entities.
What is your next step?
Luckily for you, here at the Car Pit we are sensitive to your needs. You probably think that Christmas movies are all about hooking up with your rural ex-boyfriend and pushing terrorists off skyscrapers. And many are. But what if I told you that a small number of Christmas movies are actually about cars?
Why – you’d probably call me a liar!
And you’d be absolutely right, no such movies exist.
But what if I told you that a small number of Christmas movies feature cars, more or less, and that, looked at from the right point of view, you could almost say that the car was the real star of the movie?
Again, you’d probably call me a liar and, honestly, you’re starting to hurt my feelings. How about instead of hurling accusations, you just follow my mental gymnastics as I toil to produce this listicle? I’m doing this for you, you know.
The Family Man (2000)
Sometimes we get so caught up in the stress of the grind that we become blind to the good things in our lives. That is the moral of this classic Christmas gem in which Jack, the indifferent owner of a Ferrari 550 Maranello, is temporarily exiled to a parallel universe by a vengeful and possibly jealous angel.
Jack drives an objectively cool and very expensive car, but he allows himself to be distracted by trivial nonsense – a corporate merger going awry, an ex-girlfriend resurfacing before Christmas. If this was the extent of things we might be on Jack’s side, but then he frivolously risks his life intervening in a convenience store robbery.
What are you doing, Jack? Dead people can’t own Ferraris!
Jack survives the encounter but little wonder that an angel, witnessing his reckless behaviour, gets real stroppy (angels can’t own Ferraris either) and punts Jack into an alternate reality. In this hellish dimension, a series of terrible life choices have culminated in Jack driving a Dodge minivan complete with a “My Ferrari Is In The Shop” bumper sticker. You might feel a little insulted at this juncture – this is obviously a movie about the fraught relationship between a man and his Ferrari, and the blatant exposition can feel a little unnecessary – but give the filmmakers a break, not everyone is as smart as you.
A series of plot devices are employed to force Jack to interact with his shitty car. It turns out that alternate-Jack has a wife and kids, so he can’t just leave the Dodge parked on the street. No, he has to drive that thing around; to daycare, to family outings, to work. And where does Jack work now? In a tyre shop, just in case he has missed the thrust of his celestial lesson.
By now viewers might be feeling anxious, and a drive-by visit from the angel, mockingly installed behind the wheel of Jack’s Ferrari (angels can’t own Ferraris, but they can temporarily steal them, it seems) does nothing to relieve the narrative tension. But this is a Christmas movie after all, so our readers will surely forgive us the spoiler when we say that a touching reconciliation between man and vehicle is all but guaranteed.
All in all, a solid automotive offering and a timely reminder to appreciate what you have, assuming that what you have is a two hundred thousand dollar car.
One Magic Christmas (1985)
There are no Ferraris to covet in this moral tale from the mouse house. This is a movie for car lovers who appreciate the utility of cars, for those who worship function over form.
You probably think I’m talking about transportation here, and in a way, I am. But what if, instead of physically transporting a person from point A to point B, a car could instead metaphorically transport someone from mindset A to mindset B?
In short: what if a car could be used to make your wife stop being such a biiiiiiitch?
In this heartwarming tale we are introduced to the Graingers, a working class family of four trying to have a nice Christmas in spite of the constant, baffling negativity of wife and mother, Ginny Grainger.
Ginny is favoured with a career at the local supermarket, earning enough to not only support her two children and unemployed husband, but also fund his bicycle refurbishing hobby – yet for some reason, she isn’t content. A vigorous young child-bearer with no physical infirmities, she nonetheless whines and moans about soothing feminine tasks like packing for the family’s impending eviction, attempting to offload half the work onto her beleaguered husband, who has bikes to play with. Worst of all – for some reason she’s just not all that jazzed about Christmas.
This is when God gets mad.
And the vehicle for his anger?
A car.
Well, all right, a car, a gun and then a car again. Don’t let’s quibble.
Ginny receives a warning shot across the bows when her youngest child is almost mowed down by a speeding car, but fails to recognise the glaringly-obvious, car-based message. Instead of responding to the near death of her daughter with appropriate Christmas cheer, Ginny doubles down. Her husband’s totally reasonable requests to spend their life savings on Christmas presents and a speculative bike business for himself are met with tiresome questions like “what if we get sick?” and “isn’t that a risky venture for a family facing homelessness?” or, worst of all, “can’t you please, maybe, get a job, like me, and fund your own dreams?”
God has no choice now, and Jack is brutally gunned down while he heroically hesitates in the background of a bank robbery. The robber, a good bloke and father, steals Ginny’s car containing her two children and crashes it into a river.
Deus ex machina indeed.
Ginny is all alone, which she totally deserves. But in a merciful twist, after enough time has passed to ensure that Ginny is good and convinced that her three – sorry, two – children are dead, an angel, perhaps deciding that this is all a bit heavy for a Christmas movie, secretly resurrects the kiddies and pretends they never died. Jack is still dead, but maybe that’s for the best.
You know. To punish Ginny.
But no, Ginny’s recent experiences have finally put her in the right headspace to believe in Santa Claus, and she writes him a letter, begging him to bring her husband back to life. If this seems like a crazy request to you, you have to remember that Ginny has had a big shock and women are notoriously weak minded.
Santa duly complies, the family are reunited and happy at last. Ginny is a reformed woman who gives her earnings away willy-nilly and walks around with the slightly dazed smile of someone who has had their mind shattered and remade in a more pleasing form.
And none of it would have been possible, without those cars.
Don’t roll your eyes at me, save your eye rolls for your viewing of this utterly cooked movie.
Twelve Days of Giving (2017)
Another Christmas movie where cars help to point out when women are just being so unreasonable.
Baxter is a man with a strong sentimental attachment to his aged car which breaks down on a bi-weekly basis. It belonged to his deceased father, so even when it becomes clear that holding on to it will mean that he never arrives on time for work ever again, he refuses to yield to his soulless, materialistic fiancé’s pleas to replace it with something modest and roadworthy. It’s like she doesn’t even realise that the car is a person, with an internal world of thoughts, emotions and dreams just as rich as her own.
Probably richer.
Then Baxter wins a Corvette and everything and nothing changes. He refuses the Corvette, asking for a cash prize instead. His fiancé, optimistically interpreting this as a sign that Baxter can’t be tempted by younger, hotter models, approves of his sensible decision. But she cannot help but reveal her true, hideous inner nature through a series of increasingly selfish suggestions on how to spend the dosh. As her greedy proposals mount (maybe they can serve chicken and beef at their wedding; maybe they can go on a honeymoon; maybe they can set the money aside for a house deposit; maybe they can buy a solid gold frying pan and she can beat Baxter over the head with it for the rest of their lives, amirite?) Baxter rightly starts to get cold feet.
Why should he spend the money on stupid things they might need one day, like somewhere to live, when he can spend a literal house deposit’s worth of money on Christmas toys for almost needy children, he asks?
And that’s just what he does. In a matter of days, Baxter has burnt through $22k USD buying toys for parents and grandparents who are tragically being forced to pare their shopping lists down from nine to a seven gifts. This saintly behaviour allows Baxter to upgrade from his whiny brunette fiancé to a smokin’ hot blonde single mother.
The question of who will buy her son’s Christmas presents next year is left open. It won’t be Baxter – he’s broke now. Hopefully some other guy wins a car and suffers a commitment-based mental breakdown in the form of a manic shopping spree.
At this point, I have to ask – who is writing these movies? Who are you? Please, step forward, identify yourselves. Have you considered donating your brains to science when you die?
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
Some people will try to tell you that this is a movie about Santa.
And on the surface, yeah, I can see how you could make that mistake.
But actually, if you stop and think for a minute (no longer), then I am sure you will realise that this is actually a movie about – the rise of electric vehicles. Allow me to spell it out for you with condescending parentheses.
Oddly prescient for a film made in the 80s, the story follows Patch, an elf and inventor in Santa’s workshop who develops a miraculous flying car (EV). The car runs on magic candy canes (lithium iron batteries), which innovation represents a significant step forward from the previous sleigh/reindeer toy delivering modality (internal combustion engines).
Trouble arises, however, when magic candy canes prove to be an unstable fuel source, prone to catastrophic, unpredictable spontaneous combustion (terrifying unquenchable lithium iron battery infernos), forcing the credit and profit-stealing corporate magnate responsible for rushing them to market (I don’t want to get sued) to flee to Mars (Mars).
Described by some as a propaganda film funded by the fossil fuel industry, more generous critics identify the movie as a genuine attempt to grapple with the implications of this new technology, and to speculate on how the challenges facing its adoption might be addressed.
There’s also some stuff in the movie about toys and children and the meaning of Christmas but, I assure you, it’s just meaningless padding to facilitate the car metaphor.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
You may doubt that any of our recommendations so far will provide the required scratch to your combined yuletide and automotive itch. You may even feel that, in place of the niche selection of meritorious films you were promised, you have instead received a frankly baffling assortment of Christmas movies in which cars are barely mentioned at all, to say nothing of some truly unwelcome feminism.
To this I respond – show me where I said that the movies would be good.
Anyway, you can put down your candy cane shanks because I almost deliver with this last one.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is an undisputed thoroughbred of a movie, and it’s definitely about cars. Look at the title. Look at the title and believe me.
What it maybe isn’t about is Christmas.
This classic road trip caper sees our frazzled protagonist racing home (in cars, primarily) to attend something called “Thanksgiving,” an American holiday with no apparent counterpart on the Australian calendar. Initially I was disappointed, but after watching the movie from start to finish, I am beginning to wonder whether “Thanksgiving” is actually just the American word for “Christmas.” I did try to sound out an American on this subject, but after an increasingly circular conversation about turkey, family gatherings and snow, I was forced to simply conclude that I am right. If there is a point of difference, it lies in the peculiar emphasis Americans place on thankfulness at Christmastime. My efforts to point out that Australians are also thankful was only met with frustration – apparently it’s not the same, which I take to be a polite hint that we Australians just aren’t grateful enough. Some timely constructive criticism from our American cousins.
And there we have it folks – the definitive list of Christmas movies for those who like their eggnog laced with petrol. Though for at least a couple of these movies, I’d recommend replacing the petrol with rum. And maybe also the eggnog. Merry Thanksgiving!
