It's strange that I'm now the one steering the ship when it comes to familial holiday traditions. Well, co-steering the ship. Fine, along for the ride on. er, running alongside choking on my own tears.
Anyway, as Dad, the only innovation I've offered up - going to the movies Christmas Day - crashed and burned after only one attempt (though utter failure does seem to occur annually). And as a kid, it was only marginally better.
In fact, the only thing I really look back on and remember from my youth, is this annual Christmas football game we used to hold in our yard. We grew up in Texas, so the weather was warm-ish, and post-Christmas morning was that time where all the neighborhood kids, coming down off that plastic packaging high, would shuffle up and down the street to our house on the corner of Cartwright and MacArthur. We might play five-on-five, but it might swell to ten against ten. It was a pretty f--king great time, the more I think about it, but there was one problem:
It never ended well. But more on that later...
The Night Before isn't about a bunch of fat kids playing football on Christmas Day, but it could be about them twenty years later. Set on Christmas Eve, Jonathan Levine's holiday comedy is a story about three childhood friends ending the Christmas tradition they started fourteen years prior. It's consistently vulgar, intermittently hilarious, and momentarily heart-breaking. But starring the trio of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anthony Mackie and Seth Rogen, it's entirely enjoyable, too.
JGL's Ethan is floundering through his early thirties. Haunted by the tragic events of a decade and a half ago, he seems to come alive only for the Christmas tradition put on by his best friends, Isaac and Chris (Rogen and Mackie, respectively). See, each Christmas Eve, these three guys run all over New York City in hopes of ending up at a mythical party known as the Nutcracker Ball. While it's usually Chinese Food, karaoke, and mild disappointment, this year it's finally happened: they've scored three invitations. But now they've got to score some drugs, too. Well, more drugs.
Anyway, as Dad, the only innovation I've offered up - going to the movies Christmas Day - crashed and burned after only one attempt (though utter failure does seem to occur annually). And as a kid, it was only marginally better.
In fact, the only thing I really look back on and remember from my youth, is this annual Christmas football game we used to hold in our yard. We grew up in Texas, so the weather was warm-ish, and post-Christmas morning was that time where all the neighborhood kids, coming down off that plastic packaging high, would shuffle up and down the street to our house on the corner of Cartwright and MacArthur. We might play five-on-five, but it might swell to ten against ten. It was a pretty f--king great time, the more I think about it, but there was one problem:
It never ended well. But more on that later...
JGL's Ethan is floundering through his early thirties. Haunted by the tragic events of a decade and a half ago, he seems to come alive only for the Christmas tradition put on by his best friends, Isaac and Chris (Rogen and Mackie, respectively). See, each Christmas Eve, these three guys run all over New York City in hopes of ending up at a mythical party known as the Nutcracker Ball. While it's usually Chinese Food, karaoke, and mild disappointment, this year it's finally happened: they've scored three invitations. But now they've got to score some drugs, too. Well, more drugs.
