James Proclaims!

As December rolls around again, thus begins my annual homage to movies, which are not exactly Christmas movies, but which nonetheless have some Christmas(ish) elements. This is my seventh consecutive year of doing this and if it was ever worth doing (which is wasn’t) then any merit ceased to be obvious by the end of year 3. And yet as long as I am able to compile a list of movies with references to Christmas in them, I will no doubt carry on doing this in perpetuity in spite of it, statistically, being the least popular thing I do on my blog. The fact that I have managed to post little else this year makes this annual endeavour even more bizarre, but the reality is that the vast majority of my advent calendars from 2020 (until around 2026) were completed during the increase in spare time afforded me by the pandemic years and so, however productive I may or may not be on these pages the rest of the year round, 24 pointless posts about Christmas(ish) movies will continue to appear on this blog for the foreseeable future. In the unlikely event you are interested in which movies made the cut between 2017 and 2022, the full list can be found by clicking here.

But now we must proceed with Door 1 of the 2023 edition:

Over the years the odd rom-com has made it into my festive countdown, though it is not a category of cinema that I willingly frequent often. However, if I discover one with Christmas(ish) credentials I do feel obliged to watch it in the name of research.

And so it was that I finally got around to watching Sleepless in Seattle, which is a movie I had hitherto avoided given my absolute certainty that I would not enjoy it in the slightest.

As is often the case with the classic rom-coms of the 90s though, I found myself rather liking this 1993 staple of the genre.

Objectively the whole thing is largely nonsensical and in many ways the plot, when summarised, makes more sense as a horror movie or a thriller than a rom-com. Essentially Meg Ryan plays a journalist who abuses her role to relentlessly stalk a bereaved father as played by Tom Hanks. It is definitely credit to the the two leads that a fairly shoddy premise actually ends up being quite a charming 100 or so minutes of cinema.

Score for Christmasishness

Aside from the initial few scenes, almost the entirety of the first third of the movie is set over the Christmas period and visibly so. Indeed, some quite pivotal moments in the exposition of the story take place on Christmas Eve. Ultimately the film concludes on February 14th, which, given the overall theme, might make this more of a Valentine’s Day film, but I think enough of the narrative takes place over Christmas to make this a reasonably Christmas(ish) movie.