1.
The Mogwai, Gremlins (1984)
Animal-rights
organizations, pet stores, and adoption centers have spent years trying to get
across the message that a pet is a huge responsibility which should be chosen
by the owner, not by someone looking for a quickie present. Another thing
that's a huge responsibility? Ownership of a sentient being. Especially a sentient
being which—if the owner doesn't follow a few weird, arbitrary
rules—will spontaneously spawn a horde of vicious, intelligent killer
reptile-people.
Seriously, we all love Joe Dante's hilariously anarchic horror-comedy Gremlins. But what the hell was
going through Hoyt Axton's head when he
decided that the perfect last-second Christmas gift for his teenage son Zach Galligan was a monster-spawning creature from an unknown
species? By the end of the movie, romantic interest Phoebe Cates isn't the only
one with deep-seated holiday-related trauma.
2. Chucky, Child's Play (1988)
Being a single mom isn't easy, and when the best
job you can get is behind the perfume counter at a department store, it's hard
enough to put food on the table, let alone give your annoying, precocious son
the overpriced animatronic doll he's been yapping about. So you have to cut
corners, which in Child's Play means buying the doll from the scary-looking
homeless dude in the alley. And if that isn't enough, the freckle-faced hunk of
plastic happens to be possessed by the vengeful spirit of Charles Lee Ray, a
felled serial killer who has scores to settle with guys with names like Eddie
Caputo. The good news: Little Andy has a "friend to the end." The bad news: The
end may be coming sooner than Andy and his mother probably hoped.
3. A television, All That Heaven Allows (1955)
In the Eisenhower-era suburbia of Douglas Sirk's
classic melodrama, a widowed housewife of advancing age is expected to live out
the remainder of her days alone, perhaps accompanied by a good book. So it
would be scandalous enough when attractive widow Jane Wyman seeks another man's
company, but when that man turns out to be Rock Hudson, a gardener well below
her social station, the vicious hive of high society starts buzzing. Even
Wyman's two grown children object in their own selfish ways to her newfound
happiness, and subtly seek avenues to end their mother's relationship. When
they buy her a TV set for Christmas, they're trying to force her to settle into
quiet, respectable solitude, and it's the most devastating moment in the film:
As the wrapping comes off the present, Sirk frames Wyman's reflection within
the screen—a woman boxed in for eternity by this unwanted, infernal
machine.
4.
Many presents, but specifically a stack of TV dinners, Better Off Dead (1985)
In Better Off Dead's Christmas-morning
montage, some of the worst movie gifts ever are given—and sometimes even
politely received. First, John Cusack buys his ex-girlfriend a tiny teddy bear,
only to learn that her new boyfriend bought her one a hundred times larger.
Then the cutie-pie foreign-exchange student, who's been suffering the advances
of her host family's portly nerd of a son, unwraps a photo of the boy, in a
horrendous rope frame. Cusack's dad buys the family a new garage door for the
holidays. But Cusack's scene-stealing mom, played with intense weirdness by Kim
Darby, takes the cake. For her husband, she purchases a real aardvark fur coat,
complete with aardvark-head hood, and for Cusack, she individually wraps a
towering pile of TV dinners. She knows he likes the ones with the nut-brownie
dessert and the seasoned corn.
5. A pen, Say Anything (1989)
Maybe John Cusack just engenders bad gifts. At the
end of his wonderful summer romance with Ione Skye in Say Anything, they want to give each
other something to symbolize their time together. Cusack writes a deeply felt
letter saying exactly how he feels. Skye, encouraged by her father to distance
herself from a boy she'll have to leave behind when she goes overseas for
college, gives Cusack a pen—and the big brush-off. "I gave her my heart,"
Cusack whispers. "She gave me a pen."
6.
Red Ryder BB gun, A Christmas Story (1983)
A
big reason why Christmas isn't as exciting for adults as it is for kids:
accessibility. Adults can buy whatever they want, within reason; kids typically
have to wait for a grown-up to decide that their desires are worth fulfilling.
Such is the dilemma for little Peter Billingsley in the holiday classic A
Christmas Story.
As anyone who has watched cable in the vicinity of Dec. 25 can tell you, he
desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun, but can't convince the parental powers
that be to make it happen because—all together now—he'll shoot his
eye out. Anyone who spent childhood months pining for an elusive present can
relate to Ralphie's plight, and revel in his triumph when his dad comes through
with the gun on Christmas Day. Of course, as Billingsley learns, a BB gun
really can (almost) shoot your eye out, though it's still a better present than
a bunny suit.
7. A cashmere sweater, Seinfeld (1991)
In the past, George has been referred to
euphemistically as "careful with his money," so when he buys Elaine a cashmere
sweater for helping him get a job, it's an unusual, magnanimous gesture. Of
course, there's a catch: The sweater has a tiny red dot on it, and was thus
marked down to a price George could bring himself to afford. Unfortunately,
George's frugality comes back twice to haunt him: First, when Elaine tricks him
into admitting his early-Christmas sweater was discounted, and later, when he
tries using it to hush the cleaning woman he's been diddling at his desk after
hours. In the end, he loses the job and whatever meager ounce of respect Elaine
might have held for him.
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8. The "To My Best Bud" bracelet, Friends (1996)
Having mooched off Chandler for years, the newly
flush Joey decides to pay his roommate back with a wad of cash, and with a
garish gold bracelet engraved "To My Best Bud." Joey insists that the jewelry
goes with any outfit and will do wonders for Chandler's sex life, to which
Chandler replies, "Well, it'll probably slow me down at first, but once I get
used to the extra weight, I'll be back on track." When Chandler accidentally
loses "the eyesore from The Liberace House Of Crap," he follows sitcom
convention and buys another one, only to find the original immediately
afterward. Chandler pretends that he bought the new bracelet for Joey, and when
Joey excitedly shouts, "Hey, we're bracelet buddies," Chandler ruefully
replies, "That's what they'll call us!"
9. A bowling ball, The Simpsons (1990)
It's common for gift-givers to give out presents
they'd love to receive themselves. If the giver and the receiver have simpatico
tastes, this isn't much of a problem, but otherwise, heartbreak,
disappointment, and minor annoyance invariably ensue. That's the case when
serial bungler Homer Simpson gives his wife Marge a bowling bowl with his name
on it as the world's least considerate present. This grievous faux pas drives
Marge into the arms—and nearly into the bed—of an Albert
Brooks-voiced French bowling whiz, the sort of whimsical Gallic romantic who
defines brunch as "not quite breakfast and not quite lunch, but it comes with a
slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don't get completely what you would at
breakfast, but you get a good meal."
10. An iPod, The Office (2005)
An iPod is always a good Christmas present, right?
Well, not when it's given in the spirit of one-upmanship and creepy adoration. During the "Christmas
Party" episode of The Office's second season, the Dunder-Mifflin gang
participates in a game of Secret Santa, wherein each employee is supposed to
purchase a gift for another, worth no more than $20. Showing off for the group
and giving in to his man-crush on his Secret Santa, Michael (Steve Carell) gloatingly
purchases a video iPod for Ryan. After dropping so much cash and then receiving
a handmade oven mitt from Phyllis, Michael angrily calls for a game of Yankee
Swap, wherein the officemates can force each other to trade presents. No
surprise, they're all gunning for the iPod, leaving all other thoughtful gifts
with the wrong recipients. After ruining the spirit of Christmas and the moods
of his employees, Michael attempts to repair everything with the gift that
always keeps on giving: booze for all.
11.
Jimmy James, Inc. hat, NewsRadio (1995)
In the first NewsRadio Christmas
special, "Xmas Story," the WNYX staff puts a great deal of thought and expense
into their gift for boss Stephen Root: an autographed vintage baseball jersey.
In return, they receive cheap caps with their names on the front. To compound
the insult, the names are just labels stuck atop the logos of various
subsidiaries of Jimmy James Inc., the result of "a really cheap, crappy
thought." Like any good sitcom Christmas special, though, it all works out in
the end: Root eventually comes through with sports cars for everybody, except
for office spaz Andy Dick, who gets tapes of the vintage radio show Fibber
McGee And Molly.
12. Okama Gamesphere, South Park (2001)
Meant to divert the South Park boys' attention from Stan's
mom's used tampon, the Okama Gamesphere should have been an effing sweet
gift—could a better example of "trading up" exist?—but soon the
inevitable happens: A stoned, talking towel arrives and the fourth-graders
become embroiled in intergalactic warfare. Their Gamesphere is stolen and used
to bait them into walking "Towelie" into a military ambush. Naturally, the boys'
supreme indifference is the water to the plot's ever-thickening mortar. (Stan:
"I just
want my Gamesphere back.") By the time that wish is granted, Earth has narrowly
escaped devastation. (Kenny, naturally, hasn't.) A commentary on
gaming-inspired detachment? Perhaps, but by the laws of South Park's causal chain, the
console is surely to blame.13.
An IBC towel, Scrooged (1988)
You can tell a lot about a man by the gifts he gives, and by that measure, Bill
Murray's character in Scrooged is a total bastard. The morally ambivalent,
money-obsessed network executive divides his Christmas list into two
categories: Influential associates receive a top-of-the-line-for-1988 VHS
player, while everybody else—including his overworked, underappreciated
assistant and his poor, alienated brother—receive their very own IBC
towel. Murray's lack of holiday generosity is inbred (when he was 4, his
Christmas present from his father was a package of veal), but that doesn't make
his gift of cheap network swag any less perfunctory or insulting, considering Murray
is a dastardly combination of loaded and miserly. When his assistant has to tell
her starving family that she's "drying her hair" with her Christmas bonus, it's
perfectly within reason for the Ghost Of Christmas Present to grab Murray and
smack the merry shit out of him.
14.
Carton of cigarettes, The Breakfast Club (1985)
The scene in John Hughes' angst-rific The Breakfast
Club
where wildly overacting quasi-hoodlum Judd Nelson mocks the diamond earrings
sported by pouty rich girl Molly Ringwald is supposed to be a dramatic high
point. Instead, it shows how out of it Hughes really was: When Nelson rails
about how his big Christmas gift was a carton of cigarettes, his dad's "Hey,
smoke up, Johnny!" comes across as more gregarious than abusive. Hughes'
childhood in the tony Northbrook suburb of Chicago probably left him
ill-prepared for the notion that some kids would be perfectly happy to get a
carton of cigarettes for Christmas, as opposed to, say, nothing. And hey, it
isn't like Nelson's old man only bought him a pack…
15.
A "man-ring," That '70s Show (2002)
Topher Grace and Laura Prepon's teen
romance on That '70s Show was frequently dashed by the presence
of rings. Their first breakup was triggered by Prepon's refusal to wear Grace's
promise ring, and though they'd gotten back together by the "Ramble On"
episode, her purchase of a huge, garish-looking "man-ring" for him causes
further strain. Shocked by his girlfriend's bad taste but unable to admit how
much he hates it, Grace passes the ring on to Wilmer Valderrama, the only member
of the gang who likes it. ("It looks like it would give you superpowers," he
gasps admiringly.) Although the situation is resolved, some bad times are had
while Grace tries to think of a way to wear the man-ring in public without
being humiliated; Ashton Kutcher's Kelso suggests that "maybe people will think
you won the Super Bowl."