Surviving Christmas (2004) and Family for the Holidays

When you get to the end of a year, a few things are certain. First, there will be a forced cheer pushed on the public. Decorations go up on trees, on houses, and in windows. Christmas lights twinkle. Christmas trees stand. Hanukkiah are lit over the course of eight nights. Christmas music plays on radio stations and in stores. Second, people get ready to drink and eat a lot. Christmas isn’t Christmas without some sort of a feast. New Year’s Eve isn’t a celebration without getting a little drunk. Work Christmas parties mix the two. Third, and most important to this post, people end up seeing their families.

Family is one of the most important parts of the holiday season. For many people in North America, it hasn’t been long since the whole family got together. Canada saw Thanksgiving in October and The United States saw Thanksgiving at the end of November. Thanksgiving is another holiday where entire families are willing to get together. The end of the year holidays, however, make family more important. Christmas or Hanukkah can see entire families coming together to share gifts and be with one another. New Year’s can bring about thoughts of family lost, family gained, fights, and make-ups from throughout the past year. Both holidays can involve family in major ways, though for some people, they don’t.

Surviving Christmas was a 2004 film all about family and what that means at Christmas. Drew Latham (Ben Affleck) was a ruthless advertising executive who didn’t care about celebrating Christmas with family. That was the complete opposite of his girlfriend, Missy Vangilder (Jennifer Morrison). She wanted to meet his family, but he refused. She broke up with him. In an attempt to find some sort of comfort in his life and feel less lonely, Drew took a trip back to his childhood home. He met the family that lived there. Drew made a deal with Tom Valco (James Gandolfini) that he would pay Tom $250,000 to rent the family for Christmas. Tom agreed to it and a wacky Christmas ensued.

Surviving Christmas was a fairly good example of family coming together at Christmas, though it mostly only looked at immediate family. The Valco family included Tom, his wife Christine (Catherine O’Hara), their son Brian (Josh Zuckerman), and their daughter Alicia (Christina Applegate). Drew became a surrogate second son to the family when he offered money to rent them for the holidays. It was a nuclear family with an extra son who bought his way in.

Things weren’t perfect for the Valco family, however. There was trouble brewing in their relationships that was only agitated by the addition of Drew. Tom and Christine were fighting a lot and didn’t get as physical as they used to. It was waring thin on both their parts. They were considering calling it quits after the Christmas holidays. Brian spent most of his time alone in his room with his computer. Jokes were made about how he was always masturbating up there. It was later revealed that those jokes were the truth when he stumbled upon some pornography that he never wanted to see. Then there was Alicia. She had moved out of the house. When she returned for the holidays, she didn’t like the addition of Drew. She wanted everything to be as it had always been and was opposed to any change. With the whole family dynamic changing around her, she was having a breakdown.

The holidays are supposed to be a happy time for the whole family. They come together to celebrate. They share their love and think back to all the good times they had. But underlying every family get together, there are troubling things. People may be fighting. There’s that one family member that nobody really likes. There are deaths, marriages, births, and people who just don’t show up. Families are complex and things are always in flux. If there’s one thing that Surviving Christmas did well, it was that it showed off how families try to be happy during the holidays even when things are falling apart.

Take my family for example. Everyone on my mom’s side gets together for Christmas dinner each year. It’s a whole extended family thing. People are happy to see each other. They greet each other, they listen to Christmas music, and they eat a whole lot of food. But there are always people who can’t make it. There was one time where my uncle had to work on Christmas, and the rest of the family was angry that he didn’t take the night off. Even amongst all the cheer, there was this anger that someone didn’t make it. This year will be clouded by the recent death of one of my aunts. She wasn’t always at the Christmas dinners, but it can’t be avoided that she passed away a month or so ago. It will still be a cheerful family dinner. It will just have that undercurrent of sombreness to it.

Other families straight up have some hate and detest bubbling under the surface. That’s what Surviving Christmas highlighted. Drew came into the family and demanded that they be cheerful until Christmas, when he would leave. The pending separation of Tom and Christine was put on hold as they tried to appear happy. They took the family to get a Christmas tree. They had dinner together and tried not to fight. Tom put on a Christmas hat even though he hated the idea of wearing it. They were trying to just make it through the holidays by playing into the cheer. It didn’t quite work, as it doesn’t always work in the real world.

Families always have their secrets, squabbles, and feuds. There are uncles on my dad’s side that don’t talk to each other. My dad didn’t talk to one of them for years before reconnecting and basically becoming best friends. He hasn’t talked to another one for years. That might be part of the reason that his side of the family hasn’t had much of anything for a Christmas party outside of a few people getting together for brunch the day after. People keep getting mad at each other and pushing each other away. The wedding we went to for my cousin a couple years ago had an awkward picture of all the uncles and none of them looked happy to be there with each other. It wouldn’t be a happy holiday season with all of them forced together.

Other movies have hit upon the family element of the holidays. Home Alone and Home Alone 2 were about the extended family getting together for a destination holiday, only to find out that poor Kevin was left on his own. The attempt at cheer was there, though the family never quite overcame the squabbles. Kevin got in fights with his brother Buzz. His uncle was an ass. Fuller wet the bed. They were together for the holidays, but things weren’t perfect. They never are.

One of the surest things during the holiday season is that family will come together. It could be the immediate family. It could be an extended family with a few branches coming together. It could be friends that are considered family. No matter the type of family, the holidays usually bring people together. For the most part. Movies show that. Real life shows that. Family is a holiday tradition.

Now let’s get some notes into this late by almost a week post:

• Surviving Christmas was directed by Mike Mitchell, who once directed Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (week 20).
• Phill Lewis showed up in Surviving Christmas for one scene. He also made appearances in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 (week 70) and Aces: Iron Eagle III (week 90).
• Surviving Christmas was the third time Ben Affleck appeared in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, after showing up in 200 Cigarettes (week 161) and Gigli (week 225).
• The final three timer this week was Tom Kenny, who had previously been in Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 (week 70) and Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta! (week 70).
• Kacie Barrowman returned from Tiptoes (week 28) to make an appearance in Surviving Christmas.
• Two people from Baby Geniuses (week 50) were in Surviving Christmas. They were Amanda Fein and Caitlin Fein.
• This was the second time that Christina Applegate could be seen in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. She had been in View From the Top (week 83).
• Sonya Eddy was in Surviving Christmas and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood (week 120).
• Mortal Kombat (week 140) featured Peter Jason, who was also in Surviving Christmas.
• Anika Noni Rose returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week. She was first featured in From Justin to Kelly (week 325).
• Two actors from On the Line (week 342) returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week. They were Denice Storey and John Thurner.
• Finally, Udo Kier was in Surviving Christmas. He was also in Far Cry (week 364).
• Have you seen Surviving Christmas? What were your thoughts? Is family an important part of your holiday season? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can also use Twitter and the comments to tell me what movies I should be watching for future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always open to suggestions, though I might not always use them.
• Check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram. There’s some fun stuff going on there.
• The next movie will be continuing the Christmas season, though it’s taking a hard left turn from the semi-upbeat family comedy that this week had. It’s the yearly Christmas horror film.  And it ties into something being released this month. I’ll be watching the 2006 remake of Black Christmas, and you’ll see that post soon.

Snow Dogs (2002) Anniversary Rewatch

With the claims of peak television becoming more apparent with each passing year, one thing that doesn’t get mentioned is the domination of sports programming. Sure, shows like Game of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory, and The Walking Dead were at some time in their runs scoring the highest ratings on television. Most television shows, however, pale in comparison to those. There’s so much storytelling going on that it’s almost impossible to get eyes on the screen. Oversaturation can be a problem. Live sports don’t have that same problem.

There are viewership ratings with sports, of course. But the live nature makes it much easier for sports to retain a viewership that scripted television can’t. With scripted television, people are willing to wait and binge a whole season at once. With sports, if the people don’t watch them live, then they aren’t up to date with their favourite teams. The results will get spoiled for them anywhere and everywhere. The story of sports is what happens in the moment. It’s not scripted. It’s not planned. It’s a live event that needs to be watched in real time to be fully enjoyed.

Four sports dominate the North American television landscape. Football has the NFL, which takes over Sunday programming, as well as Monday and Thursday nights. Hockey is represented by the NHL, with each team playing every couple of nights, allowing for games spread throughout the week. The same goes for the NBA, which showcases basketball. Each team doesn’t play every night, but there are enough games throughout the league that there’s something going on all week. Then there is baseball with the MLB, which has each team playing almost every day throughout their season.

Sports can be as captivating as scripted television due to the real personalities and real stakes involved. The managers, players, coaches, and referees become the characters that audiences become attached to. Rival teams become villains. Everyone likes different teams and players, which leads to every person in the audience having a different experience. There’s no way to watch everything that’s going on, so people get to pick and choose what they see to cater to their own desires. It’s an a la carte form of storytelling that happens in real time.

People behind movies have picked up on the drama associated with sports and have turned out some great movies about the games. Baseball movies like The Natural, Field of Dreams, and Major League showcase the kind of things that make the sport entertaining to audiences. Hockey got The Mighty Ducks, Miracle, and Goon. Football has a great many movies including Friday Night Lights, Remember the Titans, and Any Given Sunday. Then there’s basketball, which got films like Coach Carter, Semi-Pro, and White Men Can’t Jump. Some of them, like Miracle and Coach Carter, took real events that happened in sports and used the drama to craft the movie. Other movies, like White Men Can’t Jump and Field of Dreams used sports to tell another story.

The big four of North American sports aren’t the only sports featured in film. Soccer is one of the biggest sports in the world and thus has a bunch of movies about it. NASCAR and Formula 1 racing have been featured in movies. Cycling, running, golf, and horse racing have each been showcased in many movies. Swimming has also become a major contender in movies with films like Swimfan and Crawl utilizing it in their stories.

There are many more oddball sports that have managed to sneak into films. These are sports that one wouldn’t normally think about if they wanted to make a sports drama or comedy. Horses, cars, bikes, and the big four sports are fine. But sometimes a filmmaker wants to highlight a sport that isn’t as present in the eye of the public. And that’s where a movie like Snow Dogs comes into play.

Snow Dogs was a 2002 film about dogsledding. Well, it wasn’t entirely about dogsledding. That sport did play a major role, though. Dr. Theodore Brooks (Cuba Gooding Jr.) was a Miami dentist who found out he was adopted. His birth mother had recently passed away and summoned him to her hometown in Alaska for the final services. While there, he found out she was a dogsledder. He also found his father, Thunder Jack (James Coburn), and tried to connect with him through dogsledding. And he fell in love with Barb (Joanna Bacalso), a local bartender who was friends with his mom.

People don’t usually think about dogsledding when they think about sports. It’s not one of the main ones that comes to mind. Yet, there have been a few movies involving dogsledding. Snow Dogs wasn’t even the only movie featured in this blog to involve dogsledding. A year or so earlier, Snow Buddies had been featured. The buddies took an ice cream plane up to Alaska where they helped a child fulfill his dreams of participating in a dogsledding competition. It had been in the kid’s family, and he wanted to follow in his parents’ footsteps.

Other movies, such as Eight Below and Kayla: A Cry in the Wilderness have showcased dogsledding as well. It’s not a sport that gets too much attention in terms of television airwaves. For movies, though, it always seems to scratch an itch for storytellers. Something about people liking dogs, the look of the snowy terrain, and the tough nature of the people who do it comes together to provide the right kind of drama for the stories that need to be told. Dogsledding usually works better than would be expected for movies.

Skateboarding is another sport that gets quite a bit of play in filmmaking. For a few years, it was a major sport. It wasn’t on the level of NBA, NFL, NHL, NBA, or soccer. Oh no. But it was popular enough that people knew the names of some of the biggest stars. Tony Hawk ended up getting a video game franchise out of it, with his name in the title. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is still going to this day. Bam Margera went from skateboarding to Jackass and back again. With a handful of recognizable names, skateboarding had some traction.

There were characters in movies throughout the 1980s and 1990s that used skateboards. Some of the most memorable moments of the Back to the Future franchise couldn’t have existed without skateboarding having some popularity. Thrashin’ was a 1986 film that featured many of the pro skateboarders of the time. Gleaming the Cube came out a couple years later. The early to mid 2000s saw a bunch of skateboarding movies come out. Grind, Lords of Dogtown, and MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate capitalized on the resurging popularity of the sport. Then there was the trio of films in 2018 about skateboarding collectives. Minding the Gap was a documentary, Mid-90s was a dramedy about a group of guys, and Skate Kitchen was a dramedy about a group of gals. Skateboarding has been an under the surface major player in films for decades.

What about sports that go even further off the beaten path? Inline skating also got some time to shine throughout the 1990s. The sport was to skating what skateboarding was to snowboarding. Inline skating was the summer equivalent to strapping on some blades to cruise across the ice. Airborne used inline skating as an important part of its story. The main character was a California teen forced to live in Cleveland with is aunt, uncle, and cousin. He was the fish out of water, a middle class teen in a lower class school. He didn’t get along with his classmates. They ridiculed his desire to surf, and they mocked him when he was forced to play hockey. But he was a good skater and helped bring them together during an inline skating race down some of the most dangerous hills in the city. His willingness to let bygones be bygones and become part of the team earned his acceptance within his friend circle.

Other movies that featured inline skating during important scenes were Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, which featured the characters skating through the city streets after a skydive for charity, and D2: The Mighty Ducks, which featured the main characters skating through the Twin Cities as they were getting the team back together. The skating wasn’t as integral to the stories as it was in Airborne, but it still got an entire scene. In fact, inline skating was more important in the first Mighty Ducks movie, as the team skated through a mall to teach Fulton how to skate.

Let’s go even further off the beaten path. Dodgeball came out in 2004. Sorry, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. It was about a group of gym members who enter a dodgeball tournament in an attempt to raise enough money to save the gym. Until that point, dodgeball wasn’t seen as a professional sport. It was something that the teacher set up in gym class to watch kids pummel each other with balls. It was something that kids enjoyed because they wanted to hit each other with balls. That’s a winning situation for everyone, except for the kid who was hit in the face.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story was such a popular movie that it spawned a professional sport. Semi-professional might be a better descriptor. It inspired a television show called Extreme Dodgeball, which aired on the Game Show Network. The show featured eight teams competing against each other in a season of dodgeball to see who would come out on top. There were three seasons, with the third season featuring celebrity captains for each team. The first two seasons also featured Mark Pontius of Foster the People before the band was founded. Three seasons and a movie is pretty good for a sport that mostly just happened in grade school gym class.

Going down another level, there are movies about things that wouldn’t even be typically considered as sports. The direct-to-video sequel to Road Trip was called Road Trip: Beer Pong. The main characters were on a road trip so that one of them could meet up with a girl he once knew. The road trip involved their participation in a beer pong league. It was a sex comedy wrapped up in a sports competition film. Like many of the sports movies before it, the story wasn’t about the sport. The sport was used as a setting in which to tell the story the writer wanted to tell.

Going off of the beer theme, Beerfest came out in 2006. Two brothers recruited their friends from college to compete in an underground, international beer drinking competition. There were various drinking games. The competition, of course, ended with a chugging contest. The movie involved all of the sports tropes, but through the seedy underground beer drinking competition world. There was the teammate who had to be replaced because he died. The rival team was mocking the main characters. There was training. It was everything that a typical sports movie had, but placed in a beer drinking competition.

This sort of competition was a real thing at one point. I remember when I was in my early teen years, I was able to turn on the television and see the World Beer Games. Different nations would be competing against each other in a series of beer related drinking games. It was basically the official version of Beerfest, without the drama of brothers and heirs to a special beer recipe trying to get their family’s beer back. So, yeah, it was an underseen and relatively unknown sport.

The final one I want to highlight is something that most people would in no way consider a sport. Yet it ended up being in a movie as a sporting competition. National Lampoon’s Bay Boy was a comedic sports competition movie about a tournament to find the best grocery store bag boy. There’s not too much more to it. It was a competitive sport where people tried to be the best at bagging groceries that they could. It was like any other sports story, only with bagging groceries instead of football or soccer or boxing.

When people discuss what sports movies they like, they tend to stick to the bigger sports. The big four get cited frequently. People like football, baseball, hockey, and basketball movies. People like football, baseball, hockey, and basketball. But there are many movies about lesser sports that have been made. Some of them have stood the test of time and become favourites of the general public. Others have remained as unknown as the sports they were based on. And some just plain ended up being bad.

Whatever the case, sports movies are as popular as televised sports. Live sports on television will always be popular. The ability that people have to choose their own adventure and watch it unfold live will always pull in an audience. The real stories that come out of some of the biggest moments will always be fodder for movies, but television will always have that visceral, in-the-moment feeling. Peak television will never kill that.

Now let’s get some notes in here before we head off:

• Snow Buddies (week 270), Airborne (week 301), and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (week 226) were mentioned in this post.
• Snow Dogs was previously covered for week 322.
• @koalainchicago originally suggested Snow Dogs for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. He also suggested View from the Top (week 83).
• Snow Dogs was directed by Brian Levant, who directed Jingle All the Way (week 160).
• One of the actors in Snow Dogs was Jim Belushi. He was also in New Year’s Eve (week 57), Jingle All the Way (week 160), and Snow Buddies (week 270).
• Jay Brazeau has now been in four Sunday “Bad” Movies. He was in House of the Dead (week 59), Warriors of Virtue (week 88), and Far Cry (week 364), as well as Snow Dogs.
• Snow Dogs featured Richard Steven Horvitz, who was previously in Son of the Mask (week 207) and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (week 226).
• Brian Doyle-Murray made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Snow Dogs, after popping up in Cabin Boy (week 173) and Nothing But Trouble (week 267).
• Snow Dogs saw Anthony Harrison return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies. He had already been in Blackwoods (week 115) and Snow Buddies (week 270).
• The beginning of Snow Dogs had a brief appearance by Christopher Judge, who was also in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190) and Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark (week 300).
• Snow Dogs was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Artine Tony Browne, who had previously been in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50) and has since gone on to be in Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
• Sisqo was one of the more memorable parts of Snow Dogs. He was also a memorable part of Surf School (week 42).
• The great Graham Greene was in Snow Dogs. He made an appearance in Winter’s Tale (week 89) as well.
• An actor named David Boyce was one of the people in Snow Dogs. He was in Exit Wounds (week 93) before that.
• Snow Dogs featured Gwendolyn Osborne-Smith, who could also be seen in Jack and Jill (week 101).
• Frank C. Turner was in Snow Dogs. He also had a role in Alone in the Dark (week 152).
• Two actors from Jingle All the Way 2 (week 160) showed up in Snow Dogs. They were Angela Moore and Dave ‘Squatch’ Ward.
• Cuba Gooding Jr., the star of Snow Dogs, was also in the film Norbit (week 227).
• James Coburn, who played Thunder Jack in Snow Dogs, could also be seen in Hudson Hawk (week 232).
• After appearing in Britney Ever After (week 258), Nicole Oliver made her second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Snow Dogs.
• M. Emmet Walsh had a role to play in both Snow Dogs and Wild Wild West (week 296).
• Finally, Oscar Goncalves was in Snow Dogs, then reappeared in Dudley Do-Right (week 336).
• Have you seen Snow Dogs? What did you think of it? Do you like sports movies? Are there any sports that you think should get a better movie representation? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can also use Twitter and the comments to tell me about movies that I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments. I’m a little behind on releasing posts right now, but I’m working hard to get back on track. Once I’m on track, I’ll start working on the next section of the schedule, and your suggestions might just end up in there. Hit me up.
• There’s a Sunday “Bad” Movies account on Instagram. Check it out for cool pictures and things.
• Next week, I’m hoping to have the first of the Christmas season posts out. That means I’ll be checking out a Christmas movie. Which one could it be? I’ve gone through a bunch of bad ones already. But there are so many out there that I could do a whole year of bad Christmas movies and not run out. The post scheduled for next week will be covering Surviving Christmas, the Ben Affleck Christmas movie from 2004. It’s not to be confused with Saving Christmas, the Kirk Cameron movie I covered for week 212. I’ll see you when I get the post up.