Sandwiched between the kitschy horrors of Halloween and the commercialized merriment of Christmas, Thanksgiving is often unfairly overlooked as a cinematic main course. But while there might not be a feast’s worth of Thanksgiving movies, there is undoubtedly an appetite for Thanksgiving fare in film. Look no further than the inclusion of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Miracle on 34th Street or Wednesday Adams’s sinister (if historically-accurate) re-enactment in Addams Family Values for proof that audiences love turkey’s least favorite holiday. Of course, Thanksgiving tends to get a better treatment on TV, inspiring canonical episodes of Gossip Girl, Friends, Master of None, and, of course, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
Nevertheless, we’ve collected 21 Thanksgiving movies (and Thanksgiving-adjacent movies) that capture the spirit of the holiday—turkey-trotting, tossing the pigskin, carb-loading, fighting with your family, and then overheating in a gorgeous cashmere sweater. Here’s to finding post-meal common ground with one of the titles on this list.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
This isn’t known as the quintessential Thanksgiving movie for nothing. You know the story: Steve Martin’s uptight marketing executive, Neal, just wants to travel from New York to Chicago for turkey with his family. His plans for an uneventful trip are foiled again and again by John Candy’s boisterous shower-ring salesman, Del, who’s eager to make friends with Neal during their wayward journey. We will never look at pillows—or rental car agents—the same way again.
Almost Christmas
Don’t let the word Christmas in the title scare you away. This 2016 ensemble comedy starring Danny Glover, Kimberly Elise, Mo’Nique, and Gabrielle Union has undeniable Thanksgiving vibes. Produced by Will Packer and originally sold to Universal Pictures under the title A Meyers Thanksgiving, Almost Christmas follows the dysfunctional Meyers family as the family patriarch, Walter Meyers (Glover), tries to get through his first holiday season after the death of his wife. While it isn’t exactly about Thanksgiving per se, most of the best moments in Almost Christmas—including Elise chasing Romany Malco away from the table with a shotgun, or the whole table having to pretend to like Mo’Nique’s terrible food—take place during large family gatherings around the dinner table. What could be more Thanksgiving-coded than that? With an all-star cast of Black actors that also includes J.B. Smoove, Nicole Ari Parker, Omar Epps, and Gladys Knight, Almost Christmas feels like a homecoming full of your favorite uncles and aunties. And, to be fair, isn’t Thanksgiving almost Christmas?
Thanksgiving
The turkey isn’t the only thing getting carved up in this holiday slasher. Starring Patrick Dempsey and Tik Toker turned recording artist turned film actress Addison Rae, Thanksgiving begins with a Black Friday sale gone horribly awry in Plymouth, Massachusetts, leading to the death of multiple customers. The following year, a murderous slasher wearing a John Carver mask is wreaking havoc in Plymouth, and targeting Rae’s Gaby and her friends. If you’re not feeling warm and gooey on over the holiday, you might want to throw on Thanksgiving and watch Rae and Dempsey’s Sheriff Eric Newton try and track down and escape the clutches of a grisly murderer.
Home for the Holidays
In Jodie Foster’s comedy, Holly Hunter plays Claudia Larson, who returns home for Thanksgiving after losing her job and learning that her daughter (My So-Called Life–era Claire Danes) plans to spend the holiday with a boyfriend. The family she returns to is filled with colorful performances from Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning as her eclectic parents, Robert Downey Jr. as her misanthrope brother, and Dylan McDermott as a semi-mysterious dinner guest.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fantastic Mr. Fox isn’t technically about Thanksgiving, or even really about humans. And yet, Wes Anderson’s 2009 stop-motion film, featuring the voices of George Clooney and Meryl Streep, has been labeled a Thanksgiving must-watch. Perhaps that’s because the film, based on Roald Dahl’s classic children’s novel, is all about animals trying to escape the tyranny of farmers—something every turkey not lucky enough to be pardoned by the president wishes it could do around Thanksgiving time. Beyond the war between animals and farmers, Anderson’s rustic color palette filled with burnt orange—and the massive feast that brings a diverse array of animals around a dinner table after they successfully joined forces to steal food from their nemeses—are full of the spirit of Thanksgiving.
Pieces of April
At times, the titular April’s (Katie Holmes) fate feels as if it rests on whether she’ll successfully cook a turkey in her crowded Lower East Side apartment. As April prepares to host her suburban Pennsylvania family, the high-stakes nature of spending a day hunkered down with relatives—played by Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Alison Pill, and John Gallagher Jr.—rushes in.
The Ice Storm
Sometimes getting families together over the holidays is fraught. In this 1997 moody drama directed by Ang Lee, two affluent Connecticut families unravel over Thanksgiving break as their secrets come to lights. The ensemble cast includes stalwart actors Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver as messy parents, and, at that point, up and comers, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, and Christina Ricci as their even more troubled teens. The Ice Storm, which won best screenplay at Cannes Film Festival, is rife with adultery, substance abuse, as well as surprising turns from a host of talented actors and a sharp early film from one of cinema’s most celebrated directors.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
Nothing feels more nostalgic during Thanksgiving than watching Snoopy whip up a makeshift meal with jelly beans, popcorn, and mountains of buttered toast for all of his Peanuts pals. And Vince Guraldi’s timeless score makes for a perfect soundtrack to your own festivities.
The Big Chill
A Thanksgiving flashback provides key context for the complicated dynamics amongst this group of recently-reunited college friends, played by Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, Mary Kay Place, and William Hurt. Lawrence Kasdan’s film earned three Oscar nominations, including best picture, original screenplay, and supporting actress for Close.
She’s Gotta Have It
While not a Thanksgiving-themed film, protagonist Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) invites all three of her potential suitors to a tense dinner on that very holiday, making her memorable decision between them from her head-of-the-table vantage point. This was most of the world’s introduction to Spike Lee, both as an actor and director, and the electricity is still palpable. And if you’ve gotta have more? You can always stream the 2017 Netflix original series of the same name, starring Lee and DeWanda Wise as Nola Darling.
Knives Out
Rian Johnson’s whodunnit has all the trappings of a Thanksgiving movie, without ever mentioning the holiday. There’s family infighting, Chris Evans in a cable-knit sweater, foggy fall weather, and even a political allegory about the treatment of people of color. Also not about Thanksgiving, but worthy viewing for the full family: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which hit theaters last November.
Friendsgiving
The same year that Merriam-Webster acknowledged Instagram captions everywhere by adding “Friendsgiving” to the dictionary, a movie of the same name was released. True to its titular tradition, a group of friends convenes for a meal that inevitably devolves into chaos.
Soul Food
While not an outright Thanksgiving movie, 1997’s ensemble dramedy contains some of the most sumptuous shots of food ever committed to film. After the death of their family matriarch, a group of disparate relatives must put aside their differences and reconvene for a weekly Sunday dinner. Starring Vivica A. Fox, Vanessa Williams, and Nia Long, Soul Food captures the bonding powers that plates of cornbread, catfish, and collard greens can bring.
Rocky
This 1976 best picture Oscar winner stars Sylvester Stallone as the eponymous down-on-his-luck boxer, whose fate begins to change with the meeting of his future wife, Adrian (Talia Shire). “To you, it’s Thanksgiving. To me, it’s Thursday,” Rocky tells Adrian as he whisks her away from a disastrous family feast minutes after her brother Paulie (Burt Young) hurls her turkey into the nearby alley. As fans of the franchise, which has debuted several films over the Thanksgiving holiday, know, their Thanksgiving meet-cute will stand the test of time.
Instant Family
Thanksgiving isn’t always about bickering with your blood relatives. Spend Thanksgiving with Instant Family, which stars Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne as Pete and Ellie Wagner, an unwitting couple who, overnight, become parents to three foster children. Their decision to become parents happens over a tense Thanksgiving dinner where Ellie’s family shares they don’t think that Pete and Ellie were ever really cut out to be parents. In an effort to prove them wrong, the Wagners wind up biting off more than they bargained for as they become foster parents to three children, the eldest played by Madame Web star Isabela Merced.
Mistress America
Before Greta Gerwig forced Noah Baumbach to write Barbie with her, there was Mistress America. Written by the real-life couple who helmed the billion dollar blockbuster, this 2015 Sundance favorite centers on the unlikely friendship between Lola Kirke’s Tracy, a first-year college student alone in New York, and Gerwig’s Brooke, the Times Square-living twentysomething who will soon become her stepsister. Conflict between the pair gets resolved on Thanksgiving at New York City’s Veselka, a Ukrainian institution where pierogis stand in for the traditional bird.
Little Women (2019)
Greta Gerwig must really love Thanksgiving. The auteur’s Oscar-nominated take on the Louisa May Alcott classic is brimming with cozy, Thanksgiving-esque vibes. Set largely in the weeks before Christmas, the March sisters (Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, and Florence Pugh) and matriarch (Laura Dern) battle wits, trot through the snow, and stage living room plays in a film that feels reminiscent of many a-family gatherings.
Funny People
“First, let’s give thanks to our families not being here. It’s always easier without the family,” Adam Sandler’s George Simmons, a stand-up comedian who has been newly diagnosed with cancer, says to a group of new friends. In Judd Apatow’s 2009 dramedy, George attempts to revamp his fledgling career in the eleventh hour with the help of aspiring comic Ira Wright (Seth Rogen). At one point, he joins the younger talent’s friendsgiving festivities, where the table is surrounded by stars including Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, and Bo Burnham.
The Humans
In one of the newer entries to the turkey day canon, Stephen Karam adapts his 2015 Pulitzer finalist play of the same name, exploring the long-held resentments and deeply-rooted admiration that live in an East Coast family. Jayne Houdyshell reprises her Tony-winning role as Deirdre alongside a stacked ensemble, including Richard Jenkins, June Squibb, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, and Amy Schumer, all gathered in a drab Chinatown apartment for Thanksgiving.
Prisoners
Prisoners finds Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal teaming up to find a pair of missing girls who were abducted after Thanksgiving dinner in Conyers, Pennsylvania. EGOT recipient Viola Davis also stars in the thriller as the mother of one of the kidnapped girls. Directed by Dune’s Denis Villeneuve, Prisoners is an unconventional and unsettling Thanksgiving film.
Spider-Man (2002)
Another unconventional choice, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man is arguably the only superhero movie that doubles as a Thanksgiving movie. While the central action follows Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker, there’s a pivotal scene set at Thanksgiving dinner that directly follows a heated battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin (a.k.a Norman Osborne, played by Willem Dafoe.) Parker and Osborne have Thanksgiving dinner together with MJ (Kirsten Dunst), Harry Osborne (James Franco), and Aunt May (Rosemary Harris). During the meal, Osborne comes to the stunning realization that Peter Parker is, in fact, Spider-Man. Others have already made the case that the first Spider-Man film deserves to be included in the Thanksgiving canon. The way Dafoe carves the turkey is also both sinister and iconic, as is Maguire apologizing for his tardiness because he “had to beat an old lady with a stick to get these cranberries.”
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