Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) -vs- When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

Love Amid the Party Favors

The Smackdown. I can’t criticize anyone who’s not struck by the party mood as 2008 lurches to a merciful end. Recession, foreclosures, unemployment. Really, what’s to celebrate, so let’s see how a pair of seasonal movies rise above the gloom. The characters that populate “When Harry Met Sally…” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” survive the holiday gauntlet with their dignity intact. Both films beat back loneliness and offer inspiration. These days we’re all looking for that recipe. That’s what this Smackdown is all about: Whose New Year’s Eve party do you want to attend?   

Director Rob Reiner struck gold “When Harry Met Sally…” opened in 1989. The package had everything: a smart, Oscar nominated script from Nora Ephron, and several memorable scenes replayed and parodied over the years. The performances still hold up. Surrounding this is great music from both Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

“Bridget Jones’s Diary” quickly found a worldwide audience in Sharon Maguire’s 2001 feature film directorial debut. Helen Fielding, Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis adapted Fielding’s popular novel about a London woman concerned about love, her career prospects and her weight. Renee Zellweger shows an easy comic touch with a British accent.

Both movies offer much to celebrate; one more than the other.

The Challenger. After another lousy New Year’s Eve, Bridget Jones starts keeping a diary amid high hopes. She wants to drop some weight, cut back on smoking and drink less. Bridget is not very successful there, or in love. She falls for her scoundrel boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who likes her well enough until a new thrill comes along. Cleaver is charming, predatory, funny and betrayal comes easily for him. Just ask lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) whose wife ran off with his best man, Daniel Cleaver. Bridget’s parents (Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones) fitfully try to match her with Darcy. He’s becoming interested in a roundabout way but Bridget is not. She’s too busy with her new job as a TV reporter. It’s not going well until Darcy helps her land the big interview. Bridget is still enthralled by the scraps of attention Cleaver tosses her way. Mark Darcy barely shows his cards: “..What I’m trying to say..very inarticulately.. is that despite appearances I like you. Very much.” Bit by bit Bridget’s eyes are opened to Darcy’s submerged decency and Cleaver’s utter lack of character.

The Best Christmas Movie Is...

...would you believe? ... "It's A Wonderful Christmas Story Actually." 

It's a three-way run-off!

With Christmas only a few days away now, Americans are doing their part to jump-start the national economy by buying things they don't need in order to employ people they don't know and it's your last chance to vote in the 2008 run-off of our Movie Smackdown Christmas Movie Poll.

Last year, we asked ten of our SmackRefs to each recommend a Christmas film that they have a special fondness for, something that can stand the test of repeat viewing.  That poll turned out to be a squeaker with an unexpected winner when traditional favorite "It's A Wonderful Life" fell narrowly to the period "A Christmas Story" with a strong third place by the relatively new "Love Actually."  In any case, the past is just nostalgia. To get you in the holiday spirit again, we've put those top three finishers in the Run-off Ring against each other to decide, once and for all (at least until next year) who the real champion is in the "No-Humbug Zone."

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Nothing Like the Holidays (2008) -vs- Four Christmases (2008)

Fractured Family Christmases

The Smackdown.  Let's give thanks this Christmas season for a small miracle.  Between the two holiday films getting Smacked around here, there isn't a guy who's becoming Santa, or Santa's brother, or even an overgrown Elf forced to make it in the big city.  Instead we have more-or-less semi or comically real families trying to sort out their differences when they're forced to hang-out together and share a little winter wonderland quality time.  Instead of often lame attempts at wringing some forced laughs out of the fantasy of Christmas legend, both of our competitors serve up another theme that's gaining currency in these days of corruption, panic and collapse: the edgy holiday movie.  

"Nothing Like the Holidays" offers Christmas with a Latin beat in Chicago while "Four Christmases," which began looking for laughs right after Thanksgiving and has been gangbusters at the box-office, gives us self-absorbed millennial yuppies (muppies?) forced to deal with the debris of families torn apart by divorce and separation.  Film families forced into close quarters at Christmas.  Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.  The question is:  which one here offers a real Christmas present and which is a slice of stale fruitcake?

The Challenger.  It's Christmastime in Northwest Chicago and the magnet of familial obligation draws the Rodriguez family together. It's a distinctive group that populates "Nothing Like the Holidays."  Strong willed parents Edy and Anna Rodriguez (Alfred Molina and Elizabeth Pena) are reflected in the vivid personalities of their children: Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez), just back from a tour in Iraq and haunted by the experience; lawyer brother Mauricio (John Leguizamo); actress sister Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito).  They all open their baggage during a weeklong visit: Anna publicly accuses Edy of adultery and demands a divorce.  Mauricio and his Anglo wife, Sarah (Debra Messing) squabble over starting a family; Roxanna frets over an acting career stuck in low gear.

Complications arise: Jesse can't sort out his feelings toward the woman he dumped, Marissa. Sarah discovers Edy is neither a philanderer nor the robust man of the house.  Violence threatens to erupt outside the family circle, and Mauricio manages to alienate everyone within it.  These issues play out against a colorful backdrop of Latino Christmas with its distinctive sights and and observed rhythms.  Writers Rick Najera, Ted Perkins and Alison Swan handle matters as effectively as that assembly line of relatives making Christmas tamales at my Aunt Virginia's house.

It's A Wonderful Christmas Story Actually

With Thanksgiving behind us now, Americans are doing their part to jump-start the national economy by buying things they don't need in order to employ people they don't know and, of course, Movie Smackdown has a new Christmas poll.  Holidays are about tradition, right?  This is ours and we're sticking with it. 

Last year, we asked ten of our SmackRefs to each recommend a Christmas film that they have a special fondness for, something that can stand the test of repeat viewing.  That poll turned out to be a squeaker with an unexpected winner when traditional favorite "It's A Wonderful Life" fell narrowly to the period "A Christmas Story" with a strong third place by the relatively new "Love Actually."  Those are the finalists in this year's reader's poll.

Last year's winning vote-getter was "A Christmas Story," advocated by SmackRef Scott Baradell who picked up on the pop culture momentum of film to take the prize. It is true that the other two top films from 2007 came from SmackRefs with last names that end in, well, Zabel, (i.e. Lauren with "Love Actually" and Jonathan with "It's A Wonderful Life") but they beat out seven other critics with their picks to show.  And, by the way, yours truly picked "Home Alone" which, sadly, did not make the cut.  Three of our most prolific SmackRefs also failed to rally the voters a year ago:  Mark Sanchez liked "The Ref," Beau DeMayo favored "Polar Express," and Jay Amicarella pulled up the Polar Caboose with his pick of "A Child's Christmas in Wales."

In any case, the past is just nostalgia.  Now to get you in the holiday spirit again, we're putting those top three finishers in the ring against each other to decide, once and for all (at least until next year) who the real champion is in the "No-Humbug Zone."

After the jump, you'll read the SmackRef's statements of support for the top three vote-getting films from last years ten competitiors, followed by both the original 2007 poll and this year's 2008 poll.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Santa's 2007 Movie Smackdown!

The Smackdown. You certainly don't need to believe in Santa Claus to take inspiration from a good film that is either about the holiday or uses it as its backdrop. So here at Movie Smackdown! we've asked each of our critics to write a short blurb about a Christmas film that they have a special fondness for. Then we're going to submit those choices and others to the dreaded blog poll treatment. Which holiday film or films do you think are worth repeat viewing to get in the holiday spirit? Humbug, you say? Read on...

No, we don't think that you will likely choose "Fred Claus" as the Christmas film you'd want to recommend to your friends to see every year or even, maybe, this year. On the other hand, the breadth of Christmas films out there is wide and many have their passionate defenders and detractors. We think Movie Smackdown! is the perfect place to sort this out.

Here are the films that our critics have decided to advocate as the one Christmas movie they think you should either see for the first time or re-visit during the holidays. We have, as you'll see, a wide diversity of opinion.

By the way, if you're one of those people who simply want to vote and get it over with, you can go to the bottom of this post and you'll find the polls there.