This is a guide to what to watch on 26 December, not a review of the 2021 film called Boxing Day. The best Boxing Day films are long ones for the afternoon slump, easy ones for the family on the sofa, and something sharper once the children are in bed.
Why the 26th needs different films
Christmas Day has its fixtures, and most houses have argued them out years ago. Boxing Day is looser. Nobody has to cook anything from scratch, the big present has been opened, and there is a long flat stretch between lunch and bed that nobody has planned for. That calls for films which are long without being demanding, or funny without needing the room's full attention. It is also the one day a film only loosely about Christmas feels exactly right.
Long and lazy: the afternoon slump
The Holiday · Film guide →Our first choice for the 26th, and the verdict on its own page says as much. Two strangers swap houses for the Christmas fortnight, one lands in a small cottage in the Surrey lanes, and the lanes and the snowed-in gate do more emotional work than either romance. It is 136 minutes, comfortable and entirely predictable, and far better company than that sounds. It carries 52/100 Festive Factor. Rated 12A for infrequent strong language and moderate sex references; nothing graphic, but it is two hours of adult relationships and younger children will be gone inside twenty minutes.
White Christmas · Film guide →Two hours of very good numbers strung on very little plot, set at a Vermont inn that has no snow. It carries 64/100 Festive Factor, and it is one of the cosiest films we have scored. Rated U, and there is no jeopardy in it at all. Younger children will drift in and out of it, which on the 26th is what everybody else is doing too.
Meet Me in St. Louis · Film guide →Barely a Christmas film, which is precisely why it works on Boxing Day. A family's year told in four seasonal panels, with the winter one carrying its Christmas material and a song that has never stopped being sad. Rated U, 113 minutes, slow for the youngest, and there is one scene of real upset near the end.
Leftovers and the whole family on the sofa
Arthur Christmas · Film guide →Aardman doing Christmas at scale: a military-grade delivery operation with a family row underneath it, and one child's present left behind. Very funny about competence and funnier about families. It carries 95/100 Festive Factor. Rated PG for mild threat and fine from about five: it is loud, and tense only in the way a chase is tense.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York · Film guide →If the original went on yesterday, this is the one you put on afterwards, and nobody minds. Same premise in New York, with a grand hotel, room service on his father's credit card and meaner traps in the last half hour. Rated PG and fine from about six; slapstick violence played for laughs and one or two moments of real menace.
Jingle All the Way · Film guide →A film about the specific horror of Christmas Eve shopping, which plays rather differently on the day the sales start. Broad and shouty, with a satire of manufactured scarcity that has aged into something close to documentary. Rated PG and 89 minutes, fine for most seven-year-olds, with cartoon violence throughout and one sequence of proper peril near the end.
After the children are in bed
Trading Places · Film guide →The best fit for the 26th in the whole catalogue, because it runs from Christmas through to the new year. Two elderly brokers swap the lives of a managing director and a street hustler for a bet, and the revenge half is enormously satisfying. It carries 46/100 Festive Factor. Rated 15 for strong language, drug references and nudity, and one sequence, done in blackface, has aged very badly. Adults only.
Gremlins · Film guide →Half a snowbound small-town comedy and half a creature feature that turns genuinely nasty, often inside the same scene. Best watched late with the lights off. Rated 12, but not for small children whatever that suggests: real horror beats and creatures designed to frighten. Eleven and up.
Die Hard · Film guide →If the argument about whether it counts came up over Christmas lunch, the 26th is when you settle it. It carries 63/100 Festive Factor, and yes, we think it counts. Rated 15 for strong violence, language, nudity and hard drug use. Not a family film in any sense.
Our own 26th runs like this: The Holiday at two, Arthur Christmas at five, Trading Places at nine, and cold turkey sandwiches throughout.
