We asked our authors to share with us their favorites of 2010 – books, movies, anything that caught and held their interest. Today, Connie Willis shares her top ten holiday rom-coms. Check back Friday on Suvudu for 50-page Fridays, featuring Connie Willis’s Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. For a chance to win this book and others by Connie, click here.
I love romantic comedies any time of the year, but especially at Christmas, so what could be better than a romantic comedy set during the holidays? Here are my favorites:
1. “Love Actually”
This is my husband’s and my favorite Christmas movie, and possibly our favorite movie, period. London, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, and love in all its manifestations.
2. “The Sure Thing”
It’s Christmas break, and slacker John Cusack is trying to get to California for a “sure thing” his best friend has set up, straight-arrow Daphne Zuniga is heading there to see her boyfriend, and they’ve both hitched a ride with a show-tune-singing couple. What could possibly go wrong?
3. “The Shop Around the Corner”
Lots of you have seen the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks e-mail remake of this story of pen pals/lovers who’ve never met, “You’ve Got Mail,” but the original, with Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and the Wizard of Oz (Frank Morgan) is SO much better.
4. “While You Were Sleeping”
Sandra Bullock saves a guy who gets pushed onto the tracks of the el, but when she goes to see him in the hospital (he’s in a coma), she gets mistaken by his family for his fiancée, and she can’t tell them the truth because the grandmother has a heart condition, and then when his brother shows up … Everyone in this movie is great, but I absolutely adore Joe Jr., the only person who would try to repair a car engine with a hammer.
5. “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”
This is my favorite Preston Sturges movie, which is saying a lot, since I adore them all. It’s a Christmas movie in the very best sense, funny and heartwarming without being goopily sentimental, and terrifying to watch – the characters get into so much trouble. Author John Kessel recommended it to me, and the first time I watched it, I kept calling him and saying, “Are you sure this has a happy ending?” It does, but it takes a miracle to bring it off. (See title.)
6. “Bridget Jones’s Diary”
A perfect Christmas movie. It’s not only got Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, and a host of wonderful supporting characters (why is it the British know how to do comic characters and we don’t?), but it’s also Pride and Prejudice, only with book launches and tarts-and-vicars parties. I can’t think of a single thing I’d change about it. I like it just the way it is.
7. “Bachelor Mother”
Ginger Rogers just got fired from her department store job – at Christmas! – and then she sees a woman leaving a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage, and when she picks it up, everyone thinks it’s hers, including the son of the department store owner (David Niven) and his father (Charles Coburn). It’s got dance contests, defective toy ducks, and my favorite line ever – “I don’t care who the father is, I’m the grandfather!”
8. “The Bishop’s Wife”
The remake, “The Preacher’s Wife,” with Whitney Houston, isn’t bad, and Denzel Washington is to die for, but the original, with David Niven and a luminous Loretta Young – and Cary Grant as the angel – is the one to watch.
9. “About a Boy”
This isn’t exactly a romantic comedy – it’s more the story about how a rich and aimless young man (he’s living off the royalties from the hideous Christmas song his father wrote) and a ten-year-old boy help each other grow up – but there is a romance, and a vegetarian Christmas dinner, a divorce support group, duck-killing bread, and singing with your eyes closed, all of which make it a great Christmas movie.
10. “Miracle on 34th Street”
I never think of this as a romantic comedy, but of course it is, with Maureen O’Hara and John Payne’s romance helped along by the best matchmakers ever – ten-year-old Natalie Wood and Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn). It’s also my favorite Christmas movie ever, with the Macy’s parade, a horrible store psychologist, a little Dutch girl, bubble gum, and two martoonis.
Merry Christmas everybody!
