When I watched 3 Musketeers, I wrote about some of the movies that were updated retellings of classic stories. 3 Musketeers was a retelling of the Alexandre Dumas tale, of course. It was brought into a modern setting and given an entirely new shine. Or was that when I wrote about The Sinister Squad? That could have been it. That movie was a mockbuster of Suicide Squad, only with the squad consisting of fairy tale characters. Mostly fairy tale villains, with Alice from Alice in Wonderland thrown in there as well.
Anyway, I want to try another take at that subject with this week’s post. The difference is going to be that there will be a theme to that modern take on the classic tales. It’s not enough that stories get brought into the present. It’s not enough that two different sources are brought together to see how they work together. There’s another kind of adaptation that has become more popular in recent years. It’s one that has seen more popularity with the increased interest in Lifetime, Hallmark, and Netflix movies. I want to talk about Christmas variations on classic tales.
The March Sisters at Christmas was a Lifetime movie from 2012. Jo (Julie Berman), Meg (Kaitlin Doubleday), Amy (Molly Kunz), and Beth (Melissa Farman) were four sisters living together in their parents’ home, Orchard House. Their father, Robert (Robert Walsh), was recently injured overseas. As their mother, Margaret (Paula Plum), was about to head overseas to stay with their recovering father, she brought in a realtor to give the house a looksee. The sisters didn’t want to sell their house. Instead, they decided to renovate it in their parents’ absence. Family drama ensued as the sisters fought, fell in love, and got jealous of one another.
The inspiration for The March Sisters at Christmas was Little Women. It took the characters from that classic piece of literature and updated them into a modern Christmas setting. Jo was still a writer looking for her big break. Meg was still the responsible one ready to get married. Beth was still the young one with musical talent. Amy was still the kind of rebellious one who was kind of jealous of Jo. Theodore Lawrence (Justin Bruening), nicknamed Teddy instead of Laurie, was still there, too, to be the brotherly boy next door who confesses his love to Jo and get rejected. A lot of the core elements were there in the characters and their relationships.
There were some moments in The March Sisters at Christmas that were reworked story beats from the original novel, as well. In Little Women, Amy became jealous of Jo and burned her manuscript. This was modernized in The March Sisters at Christmas. Jo got a job ghost writing a memoir for a famous young celebrity. She was given access to that celebrity’s social media to share thoughts and tidbits as that celebrity. Amy, in a fit of rage, snuck into those social media accounts and posted some naked photos. It was her way of sabotaging Jo’s writing career, in the same way that the burning of the manuscript was used in the source material.
It was things like that which made The March Sisters at Christmas feel like a proper updated version of Little Women. It had the characters being extensions of what they were in the source material. They weren’t the exact same, of course. They were updated into women of the modern day, rather than women of the past. Story beats found their way into the updated version, with things being taken from the past and brought to the future. Manuscript to social media and that sort of stuff. Some things were even translated directly. Mr. Lawrence (John Shea) gave Beth a piano as a gift, something I remember from at least one of the Little Women film adaptations. All in all, it was an interesting little adaptation, even if the quality wasn’t something audiences might want from an adaptation of Little Women.
The March Sisters at Christmas wasn’t the only time that a classic tale was adapted into a holiday setting. Christmas movies frequently pull from non-Christmas tales to create something new that feels familiar. Filmmakers will take a story that people already know, give it a festive spin, and release it to the world. With the amount of Christmas movies released theatrically, onto television, or onto streaming services, there are sure to be some movies that adapt other stories to the season.
Now we’re at a point where things get a little more hazy. There are a whole lot of the movies on the television side of things and the streaming side of things that take classic stories and give them a Christmas setting. I have seen almost none of them, outside The March Sisters at Christmas, so I can’t get into much detail about them. I’ll try, but I can’t promise I’ll have more than surface level thoughts because, again, I haven’t seen the movies.
One of the most common genres for these kinds of Christmas movies, something that The March Sisters of Christmas had to some extent, is romance. Love is always in the air on channels like Hallmark and Lifetime during the holiday season. Netflix got into that arena, as well. Many of these movies are the stereotypical working woman or man goes from the big city to a small town for some sort of business. They meet a local who loves the holidays. They fall for that local, compromising their business, but learning about the spirit of Christmas. Other movies change the blueprint by adding some classic literature into the mix.
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe was a 2018 Hallmark Christmas movie that took the Jane Austen novel and adapted it within the confines of the stereotypical Hallmark Christmas romance. A woman named Darcy went back to her hometown and found love with her former rival. Another Christmas movie based on the classic novel, Christmas at Pemberley Manor, was released by Hallmark that same year. They were going wild with the Christmas-themed Pride and Prejudice adaptations.
Netflix had already struck gold with The Christmas Prince when they released a new Christmas franchise starter in 2018. The Princess Switch starred Vanessa Hudgens as two identical women who switched their lives for a couple days. The concept for this story was taken from The Prince and the Pauper, a Mark Twain tale from 1881. It was such a success that it spawned two sequels, each sort of still based on the classic piece of American literature. The franchise was a Christmas adaptation of Mark Twain.
To a less “classic” extent, there was 2012’s Lifetime television movie Holly’s Holiday. It was essentially a gender-swapped version of the film Mannequin. A woman named Holly fell in love with a man who was a mannequin at a local store. Except he was now a living, breathing man. A living, breathing man who still acted like a mannequin. He wanted everything to look nice like a mannequin display. He was always modeling like a mannequin. Things like that. It was a quirky little film that clearly took inspiration from that earlier romantic comedy, without being that earlier romantic comedy.
There are Christmas movies written for the holiday in a way that, if the holiday season wasn’t a part of the movie, the movie couldn’t exist. The story revolves around the holidays. Then there are movies where the story is the story, and the holiday is just placed on top of that. Some of those stories are the cliché romance flicks being pumped out of Hallmark, Lifetime, and Netflix. There are some, however, that use other stories as the basis for some holiday fun. They take stories that people know from older movies and books. They adapt them into the holiday season. They change things up a bit.
Holiday adaptations can be a fun update to something that people are already familiar with. That fun feeling is why so many sequels tie into Christmas. It gives things a festive feeling, while providing more of what people loved about the earlier installments. The same could be said about the adaptations. Some stories have already been adapted into films and television series numerous times. A Christmas adaptation brings a new angle that could freshen a tired story up. And the success of said adaptation is up to the audience to decide. I, for one, appreciate the effort.
With that, let’s get onto the notes:
- I mentioned 3 Musketeers (week 384), Sinister Squad (week 453), and Holly’s Holiday (week 421) in this post. I also mentioned Mannequin. I covered Mannequin: On the Move (week 378) for this blog.
- Have you seen The March Sisters at Christmas? What did you think of it? How do you feel about filmmakers giving classic stories a Christmas twist? Put your thoughts in the comments or share them with me on Twitter.
- If there’s a movie you think would be a good fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can let me know all about it on Twitter or in the comments. Tell me. I like to discover movies I don’t know about.
- Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram. I may have skipped a week with it, but I plan to get back to posting regularly.
- Christmas is less than a week away, which means that next week will not be a Christmas movie. At least, not to the same extent as these past two. It’ll be a little more New Year. Ground Control was an air traffic control disaster movie set around New Year’s Eve, and it’ll be the topic of the next blog post. It would be nice if you’d join me for the post. See you next week.
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