Christmas falls on a Friday this year, which means that we have the rare opportunity to evaluate our societal wants by a surprisingly accurate (because it’s never been tested), highly visual barometer: posters for movies opening on Christmas. Conveniently enough, every movie opening this December 25th is some form of delicately wrapped Christmas present, and all are hoping to fill the empty space in our hearts with cheer and peppermint and tinsel, like some kind of wildly ineffective Santa cardiologist—Or like some other painfully stretched metaphor that makes slightly more sense. Point is, the movies opening Christmas day are all trying to give us what we’ve been wishing for all year.
So, according to the movie posters, what do we want for Christmas?
1. An utterly satisfied Alec Baldwin, and a hilariously confused Meryl Streep sharing a bed together.
It’s Complicated knows that deep down we all just want to see your mom’s favorite impossibly-cheekboned actress and your dad’s favorite husky-voiced actor in a zanytimes, post-divorce romance. Alec Baldwin seductively growling, “OMG, I thought he’d never leave” to Meryl Streep is like the Kay Jewelers’ diamond heart pendant of movie Christmas presents: tacky, obvious, kind of funny, and almost universally desired by mall-goers.
2. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law posing for one of those campy, olde-tyme photos you can buy at a theme park.
Aww. Wasn’t it sweet of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law to bring you back a souvenir from their day at Six Flags? And the gray Victorian apothecary backdrop they chose is just precious. They look like they had so much fun dressing up as Ye Olde-Tyme Guy #1 and Ye Olde-Tyme Guy #2.
3. To be Italian.
They could have gone with “This holiday season be Guido,” since that’s the main character’s name, but they know we don’t want to be a guido. We want to laugh at guidos. That’s why we watch The Jersey Shore. No, apparently everyone wants to be a glamorous, La Dolce Vita-era Italian this Christmas—and the warmed-over, movie musical version of 8 ½ is the closest we’ll get to that.
4. A magical Prince album cover.
In which Heath Ledger plays Prince.
5. Rodents.
Apparently, one of the things we all want for Christmas is to watch CGI rodents experience a sort of sexual awakening on screen. At first the chipmunk brothers in Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel flirt aggressively with the human girls at their high school. The weird part is: it works. The human girls are so attracted to Alvin, a tiny talking chipmunk, that the human boys at this inter-species high school are threatened. But once the Chipmunks meet the CGI Chipettes, Alvin & Co abandon all thoughts of dating outside their species, and the inevitable beastiality scenes are averted. A teenage CGI Chipmunks coming of age story—what could be a better Christmas present?
Happy Holidays, everyone. May you always get annoyed in the new year! (Regularly scheduled hating will resume in 2010.)