‘The Irishman’ Is A Perfect Thanksgiving Movie
Take a dose of tryptophan and watch Martin Scorcese’s gangster epic
After every Thanksgiving dinner, I turn into a sort of centaur, the mythological beast whose lower-body is a horse, only I’m half-man, half-couch. I am not one of those Americans who watch football while lost in a gravy fog. I was raised by Texans. Texans are to football what Klingons are to space battle.
Instead, I put on a movie and hope my friends and family join me, bellies exposed. It can’t be just any movie, of course. It must be a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie, which is a very specific kind of movie. There are three things a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie needs:
- It needs to be long enough that you can take a short nap, wake up, and still follow the plot
- It needs to be a serious movie but should have a few laughs
- It needs to teach some kind of basic moral lesson.
Wizard of Oz is a good Thanksgiving movie. So are any of the Lord of the Rings movies, which are intense but have some lighthearted moments. I find Hobbits talking about taters to be very amusing. Die Hard may be considered a Christmas’movie but it is too short to be a ‘Thanksgiving’ movie and the moral lessons — don’t rob people, be a good ex-husband — are too basic. Depressing…
