HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS MOVIE Story by Emily Yoon, Gaby Lesmana, and Vanessa McLaughlin Graphics by Emily Yoon If New Year’s Eve is our time to turn over a new leaf, it must be the job of Christmas, or at least Christmas movies, to submerge all who celebrate into a vat of stunningly blasé, peppermint-flavored monotony. Calling Christmas rom-coms a genre of their own is like classifying all of Hollywood’s Chrises as their own race. Sure, we don’t need all of them, but somehow we’ve looped ourselves into an alternate universe where there’s a particular market for movies with identical plots and gaunt-looking white men with beards in their thirties. It’s a bit of a Chrisis. Still, there’s a certain comfort in watching what might as well be the same movie over and over again. If you didn’t like the edgy, misogynist humor of “Groundhog Day,” maybe you’ll like vanilla Millennial humor cinnamonwrapped à la Hallmark and Netflix Originals. Watch as a competent, career-driven businesswoman learns that the Wall Street sphere just isn’t for her! See as she ends up in her hometown (surprise!) for Christmas
and falls for her middle-school boyfriend (Ew! We know), who, for all the strategically warm mood lighting and royalty-free Christmas jingles that play whenever he’s around, is little more than a glorified, Fred-from-ScoobyDoo-esque lumberjack. Or see in awe as an American tourist books a lastminute trip across the pond to a tiny country that doesn’t exist and bumps into a boy with killer table etiquette and a secret to hide. He’s actually the Prince and is hiding his whirlwind romance with a foreigner from his traditionalist parents and a disapproving public? Who would have guessed? But we’ve broken down the Christmas rom-com tropes to a T! This year, you can create your own cheesy cinematic rom-com universe in spirit of the holiday season with The Paw Print’s Official Guide:
It’s as if the disgruntled business partner or exfriend is always standing in the wings, waiting for their moment to show the world just how envious they are of the happy couple. They probably have very little to do with the actual plot but are just dying to sprinkle coal in everyone’s stockings. In summary, this character is only there to be scowling in the background and will most likely fail in whatever ‘evil’ scheme they are plotting.
VILLAIN
They’ve got places to be, or so they think. They’ve probably got several scenes talking on the phone while juggling a coffee and file folders just to hammer home the idea that they’re busy. Despite all of that, they give up their career at the end to be with someone they just met.
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