I probably would never have seen 1987’s Moonstruck if I didn’t do this stupid annual list of movies with a tenuous link to Christmas. I just happened to be channel surfing late one evening a few years back while waiting for my youngest child to go to sleep, when this started playing on my TV. Having no knowledge of the film I might have switched channels there and then, but fortunately for me, the opening scenes are quite Christmassy. So it is for that flimsiest of reasons that I watched it.
It would be disingenuous for me to describe it as a good movie. The multiple awards it claimed (including several Academy Awards) render my opinion as largely moot. But I did enjoy it, irrespective of its accolades. And I laughed quite a lot throughout.
Score for Christmasishness
As well as being an excellent movie in its own right, it is also very Christmas(ish) while still being a movie that is, in no way, actually a Christmas film. The premise of the film would work at any time of year, but being set in a very festive 80s New York makes an already delightful movie possibly even more so.
James Proclaims! 