Between social media and all those end of the year charity commercials with starving dogs, children, immigrants, suicide rates are up. The natural antidote for that is watching christmas movies but they have become so cliche ridden that I started a drinking game.
Every time we see a Christmas/Romance movie cliche chug a beer. If the movie repeats the same cliche twice drink a shot.
Trigger cliches in no particular order:
1- Interrupted first kiss.
2-Old man really is Santa Claus
3-Magical icons with special powers
4-Wishes made to Santa Claus come true
5-Accidentally run into ex-lovers.
6-Best friends recognized as love partners
7-True love develops overnight (in less than 2 hours)
8-Big kiss at 1 hour 59 minutes
9-attractive women in too tight pants (is there such a thing?)
10-women wake up in the morning in full makeup
11-women wearing stiletto high heels in snow and mud
12-snow flurries in warm climates
13- deceptive emotional manipulation
14-royalty secretly posing as commoners, girl marries the prince/king/whatever.
15- vehicle problems too easily fixed
16-angels (elves) in real life
17-ettiquite mistakes at formal dinners and friendly staff.
18-impromptu snow ball fights
19- kitchen/cooking disasters; blender explosion, flour fight, burned cookies, etc.
20-unexpected love triangles
21-literally "saving the farm"
22-silly made up town/country names
23-international travel without securing a passport
24-white lies that snowball into plot lines
25-free evening gowns/wedding dresses
26-solo acoustic guitar/piano that sounds like full orchestra... raw vocals with tons of reverb
27-recycled plots from classic movies
28-public enemies become private love interests
29-weather interrupted travel plans, throwing strangers together
30- impractical business plans/solutions
31- unlikely workplace scenes, like unsanitary wine thief used in a winery, etc.
32- female assistant pretends to be boss, wears her designer dresses.
33- more than one christmas tree per room
Etc,,, Do not play this game if you are driving or have alcohol management issues. Enjoy I'm sure I missed a few.
I think the scriptwriters get extra credit for copying classic movie themes, but now they are so bereft of original ideas that they are copying other christmas movie plots. Another cliche that I didn't list is the forced diversity being sure to check every diversity box in every movie. One recent movie combined two check boxes in one secondary character. In a small vermont town the preacher complaining about his new baby causing him to lose sleep, introduces his wife (a black man). That twofer deserves double shots.
JR