As the leaves turn and the air cools, an unmistakable ritual announces itself: Thanksgiving. Few holidays are as unapologetically anchored in family — the gathering, the bickering, the reconciliation, the traditions, and, importantly, the mounds of food everyone devours with abandon. It is a holiday about connections: parents and children, siblings and spouses, roast turkey and cranberry sauce.
In a time when those bonds feel more fragile than ever, frayed by petty political spats and manufactured grievances, a reminder of their importance is needed all the more. Here are five favorite Thanksgiving-themed films (and a TV series) that do just that.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
What makes John Hughes so fitting for Thanksgiving is his inimitable knack for capturing people: their quirks, their friction, and the small, revealing nuances of human interaction. Planes, Trains and Automobiles distills that talent perfectly. Steve Martin’s Neal Page is a tightly wound ad executive with an almost constitutional need to control everything around him. Hughes brilliantly sets him against John Candy’s Del Griffith, a loquacious shower-ring salesman whose very presence is an affront to Neal’s carefully manicured composure.
Beset by rerouted flights, broken-down cars, and a catalogue of travel disasters, their turbulent journey home for Thanksgiving slowly chips away at Neal’s hardened exterior and forges an accidental brotherhood. If two complete strangers with such spectacularly clashing personalities can survive this journey and arrive at genuine friendship, then surely we can survive a Thanksgiving table with relatives who voted the “wrong” way.
Dutch (1991)
I promised myself not to stack this list with John Hughes movies (a choice that could be completely justified), but Dutch is a half-measure: Hughes wrote and produced, but didn’t direct the film. Leaving it off a Thanksgiving list would be an act of critical malpractice.
The film centers on Dutch Dooley (Ed O’Neill), a gruff, working-class boyfriend tasked with bringing his girlfriend’s snooty prep-school son, Doyle (Ethan Embry), home for Thanksgiving. There is no actor alive who could deliver a line such as “nothing burps better than bacon” with more conviction than O’Neill.
Doyle resents his mother for her divorce, despises Dutch for being “beneath” him, and radiates the kind of bratty entitlement only a trust fund can underwrite. Dutch’s answer is simple: teach the youth about manhood, the old-fashioned, Jack Kerouac, American way: through discomfort, humility, and a long road trip taken without the crutch of family wealth.
The beauty of Dutch is that it never sermonizes; it subtly conveys its morals as the characters bond through misadventures, arguments, slapstick humiliations, and those early ‘90s jokes Hollywood no longer has the gall to attempt — “So, you like to wiggle and grunt, huh? Me too,” Dutch says as he ties Doyle to a hockey stick and carries him out like luggage. The film’s moral core is the importance of fatherhood and the joy of watching your child grow into the best version of himself.
Scent of a Woman (1992)
Few films offer as much substance to ponder at the Thanksgiving table as Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman. The story centers on the unlikely pairing of Charlie Simms (Chris O’Donnell), a scholarship student at an elite prep school, and Lt. Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino), a blind, tormented veteran who becomes his companion over Thanksgiving weekend.
When Charlie witnesses a crude prank by his wealthy classmates, he’s pressured by the school’s administration to turn on them, with Harvard University dangled as the reward for compliance and expulsion implied as the punishment for defiance. Pacino delivers a volcanic performance, embodying a bruised, battered authority rooted in discipline, dignity, and the willingness to face consequences head-on. His courtroom scene is justly eminent, but the real joy of the film lies in watching Col. Slade — despite his depression and suicidal urges — teach Charlie how to live: how to stand firm, take risks, savor joy, dance the tango, and become a man of conviction rather than convenience. It’s a beautiful and inspiring mentorship.
Thanksgiving dinners stereotypically involve some degree of political bickering among warring relatives. But regardless of party or persuasion, if we could agree on the principles and moral clarity embodied in Scent of a Woman, we’d all be better off.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Bookended by two Thanksgiving dinners, Hannah and Her Sisters is a masterclass in storytelling. It is not only my favourite Woody Allen film, but one of my favourites from any filmmaker. In under two hours, Allen guides us through the tightly interwoven lives of three sisters, their husbands, and their comedically tangled affairs — all against the enchanting backdrop of fall in New York in the 1980s, pulsing with Cole Porter, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and Bach.
The story is anchored in the idea of gratitude — of recognising the good already present rather than spiralling over what’s missing. Mickey (Woody Allen), sinking into a death-obsessed funk, arrives at the film’s defining moment of clarity: “I need to stop ruining my life searching for answers I’m not going to get, and just enjoy it while it lasts.”
Elliot (Michael Caine) experiences his own reckoning. After an ill-advised fling, he realises that the greatest thing in his life is the marriage he took for granted. His return to his wife is a recognition that family, however imperfect, holds him together. That rediscovery of what matters and the humility required to admit it gives the film its emotional spine.
One of the funniest and most characteristically Woody Allen lines arrives when Mickey’s father, exasperated by his son’s philosophical crisis, snaps, “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don’t know how the can opener works.” It perfectly encapsulates the film’s worldview.
Allen once dismissed the ending as “too happy,” but that optimism is precisely what makes the film so rewarding to revisit. Amid infidelity, neurosis, and existential panic, there is something undeniably uplifting about watching characters pull themselves out of their own self-inflicted misery and choose gratitude. In the context of Thanksgiving, that feels especially resonant.
Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)
And then, for pure comfort, there is Gilmore Girls — especially those early seasons when Rory is a budding Chilton pupil — a series so steeped in autumnal charm it may as well have been filmed in a pumpkin-spice fog. Savor the foliage, the festivals, the sweaters, the romantic intellectualism, and, most of all, the mother-daughter dynamic that forms the show’s beating heart.
THANKSGIVING PRICES DECLINE FOR THIRD STRAIGHT YEAR THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
The witty, rapid-fire dialogue between Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) stands as one of television’s great portraits of motherhood: flawed, funny, self-sacrificing, and aspirational all at once. It’s impossible not to think of Thanksgiving while watching the two navigate family expectations, generational clashes, and the ambitious idealism that shaped Rory’s youth. I shudder to imagine her thoughts on Harvard today.
Lorelai and Rory embody everything the holiday cherishes — generational bonds, shared rituals, and the triumphs and frustrations of raising a child with principles — all within the comforting charm of Stars Hollow.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.
