When you go away to college and then come home for the holidays, the place you grew up and know so well can seem like a radically different place. Like you, your hometown and the people who still live there have changed during that time, but you were not expecting them to and often surprised by it. This is the reality faced by Clay as he returns home to L.A. for the Christmas break. Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the story highlights the decadence, greed, and selfishness of the 1980s, a point only highlighted by all the worst aspects of the Christmas season. In the movie, there are plenty of Christmas parties, complete with hideous/trendy decorations and plenty of snow (but only the fake kind and the other kind you snort up your nose).
10. Trading Places (1983)
Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd together in a movie = 80s comedy gold, such as the case with Trading Places. With a Frank Capra-like storyline (the same man who directed Its A Wonderful Life), the underlying morality theme of Trading Places has a very common place in the Christmas movie genre. The action is spread over several weeks from Thanksgiving to New Years, but the crux of the action occurs smack dab in the middle of Christmas and gives us a distraught and desperate Dan Akroyd in a Santa suit trying to plant drugs on his former employer and ultimately eating raw salmon on a city bus.
Chris lives in New Orleans. He writes for several local publications and national websites - mostly about film, television, books, music, food, special events, and pop culture. Since writing unfortunately never pays much, he pays the bills with his day job in marketing.
When you go away to college and then come home for the holidays, the place you grew up and know so well can seem like a radically different place. Like you, your hometown and the people who still live there have changed during that time, but you were not expecting them to and often surprised by it. This is the reality faced by Clay as he returns home to L.A. for the Christmas break. Based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the story highlights the decadence, greed, and selfishness of the 1980s, a point only highlighted by all the worst aspects of the Christmas season. In the movie, there are plenty of Christmas parties, complete with hideous/trendy decorations and plenty of snow (but only the fake kind and the other kind you snort up your nose).