Decline of the Family Holiday Film

We want it done right or we don't want it at all...

Ok, let's talk film. The holidays are fast approaching and I wonder what kind of Holiday fare we will see. Well I can tell you right now. Its gonna be a Christmas film about not wanting to be with family. Well Hollywood echos itself this way. They show us who they are by releasing Holiday film like this. This anti family fare has been in the mix for a long time. I just saw this trailer for Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon and I can tell you that the trend is here to stay. If you look at the past Christmas film releases you will see the exact same trend.

The past flock of films include Saving Christmas, Christmas With The Cranks,Deck the Halls, and Surviving Christmas. The new theme here for Christmas film is avoiding family and the theme here is continued with this new Reese Witherspoon film. Why is this trend alive? I believe that Hollywood makes the films that they themselves believe in. Aside from the fact that the town in heavily Jewish, there still is necessity of a Holiday gathering in Judaism with Hanukkah. So, with whatever gathering the execs and writers in Hollywood choose, there is a need to tell a story of the estranged family.

The simple point is that execs don't care about family. They greenlight Christmas films they want to see. They think this lack of family togetherness if funny. Yet, its not funny. Those films I mentioned above did not do well because the audience does not think the same as an exec. We, as an audience, love our families. Sure, in reality it is uncomfortable to see all our relatives at once, but we don't avoid them like the films execs put out during Christmas.

All these anti family Christmas films have failed. They will continue to fail because of what I talked about yesterday. Hollywood execs and the Box Office are two different entities. Execs obviously don't care about their families. But we as an audience do. They are gonna have to do better in delivering family fare about families that actually has a traditional family theme. Otherwise we will avoid it as we have been. Until Tomorrow, let's talk film!